Utilitarianism

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UTILITARIANISM

BY

JOHN STUART MILL.

REPRINTED FBOM 'FBASEB'S MAGAZINE.'

LONDON :

PARKER, SON, AND BOURN, WEST STRAND.
1863.

[Tke Author reserves the right qf Translation.]

LONDON:

SAVILL AND EDWARDS, PRINTERS, CHANDO3 STREET,
COVENT GARDEN.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

PAGE

GENERAL REMARKS 1

CHAPTER II.

WHAT UTILITARIANISM IS 8

CHAPTER III.

OF THE ULTIMATE SANCTION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY. 38

CHAPTER IV.

OF WHAT SORT OF PROOF THE PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY IS

SUSCEPTIBLE 51

CHAPTER V.

ON THE CONNEXION BETWEEN JUSTICE AND UTILITY ... 61

UTILITARIANISM.

CHAPTER I.

GENERAL REMARKS.

rpHERE are few circumstances among those which
make up the present condition of human know-
ledge, more unlike what might have been expected, or
more significant of the backward state in which spe-
culation on the most important subjects still lingers,
than the little progress which has been made in the
decision of the controversy respecting the criterion of
right and wrong. From the dawn of philosophy, the
question concerning the summum bonum, or, what is
the same thing, concerning the foundation of morality,
has been accounted the main problem in speculative
thought, has occupied the most gifted intellects, and
divided them into sects and schools, carrying on a
vigorous warfare against one another. And after
more than two thousand years the same discussions
continue, philosophers are still ranged under the same
contending banners, and neither thinkers nor mankind
at large seem nearer to being unanimous on the
subject, than when the youth Socrates listened to the
old Protagoras, and asserted (if Plato's dialogue be
grounded on a real conversation) the theory of utilita-
rianism against the popular morality of the so-called
sophist.

2 UTILITARIANISM.

It is true that similar confusion and uncertainty,
and in some cases similar discordance, exist respecting
the first principles of all the sciences, not excepting
that which is deemed the most certain of them,
mathematics ; without much impairing, generally in-
deed without impairing at all, the trustworthiness of
the conclusions of those sciences. An apparent ano-
maly, the explanation of which is, that the detailed
doctrines of a science are not usually deduced from,
nor depend for their evidence upon, what are called
its first principles. Were it not so, there would be
no science more precarious, or whose conclusions were
more insufficiently made out, than algebra ; which
derives none of its certainty from what are commonly
taught to learners as its elements, since these, as laid
down by some of its most eminent teachers, are as
full of fictions as English law, and of mysteries as
theology. The truths which are ultimately accepted
as the first principles of a science, are really the last
results of metaphysical analysis, practised on the ele-
mentary notions with which the science is conversant ;
and their relation to the science is not that of founda-
tions to an edifice, but of roots to a tree, which may
perform their office equally well though they be never
dug down to and exposed to light. But though in
science the particular truths precede the general
theory, the contrary might be expected to be the case
with a practical art, such as morals or legislation. All
action is for the sake of some end, and rules of action,
it seems natural to suppose, must take their whole
character and colour from the end to which they are
subservient. When we engage in a pursuit, a clear
and precise conception of what we are pursuing would

GENERAL REMARKS. 3

seem to be the first tiling we need, instead of the last
we are to look forward to. A test of right and wrong
must be the means, one would think, of ascertaining
what is right or wrong, and not a consequence of
having already ascertained it.

The difficulty is not avoided by having recourse to
the popular theory of a natural faculty, a sense or
instinct, informing us of right and wrong. For — be-
sides that the existence of such a moral instinct is
itself one of the matters in dispute — those believers
in it who have any pretensions to philosophy, have
been obliged to abandon the idea that it discerns what
is right or wrong in the particular case in hand, as our
other senses discern the sight or sound actually pre-
sent. Our moral faculty, according to all those of its
interpreters who are entitled to the name of thinkers,
supplies us only with the general principles of moral
judgments ; it is a branch of our reason, not of our
sensitive faculty; and must be looked to for the
abstract doctrines of morality, not for perception of it
in the concrete. The intuitive, no less than what
may be termed the inductive, school of ethics, insists
on the necessity of general laws. They both agree
that the morality of an individual action is not a
question of direct perception, but of the application of
a law to an individual case. They recognise also, to a
great extent, the same moral laws ; but differ as to
their evidence, and the source from which they derive
their authority. According to the one opinion, .the
principles of morals are evident a priori, requiring
nothing to command assent, except that the meaning
of the terms be understood. According to the other
doctrine, right and wrong, as well as truth and false-

B2

UTILITARIANISM.

hood, are questions of observation and experience.
But both hold equally that mprality must be deduced
from principles ; and the intuitive school affirm as
strongly as the inductive, that there is a science of
morals. Yet they seldom attempt to make out a list
of the a priori principles which are to serve as the
premises of the science ; still more rarely do they
make any effort to reduce those various principles to
one first principle, or common ground of obligation.
They either assume the ordinary precepts of morals
as of a priori authority, or they lay down as the com-
mon groundwork of those maxims, some generality
much less obviously authoritative than the maxims
themselves, and which has never succeeded in gaining
popular acceptance. Yet to support their pretensions
there ought either to be some one fundamental prin-
ciple or law, at the root of all morality, or if there be
several, there should be a determinate order of pre-
cedence among them ; and the one principle, or the
rule for deciding between the various principles when
they conflict, ought to be self-evident.

To inquire how far the bad effects of this deficiency
have been mitigated in practice, or to what extent the
moral beliefs of mankind have been vitiated or made
uncertain by the absence of any distinct recognition
of an ultimate standard, would imply a complete
survey and criticism of past and present ethical doc-
trine. It would, however, be easy to show that
whatever steadiness or consistency these moral beliefs
have attained, has been mainly due to the tacit in-
fluence of a standard not recognised. Although the
non-existence of an acknowledged first principle has
made ethics not so much a guide as a consecration of

GENERAL REMARKS. 5

men's actual sentiments, still, as men's sentiments,
both of favour and of aversion, are greatly influenced
by what they suppose to be the effects of things upon
their happiness, the principle of utility, or as Bentham
latterly called it, the greatest happiness principle, has
had a large share in forming the moral doctrines even
of those who most scornfully reject its authority.
Nor is there any school of thought which refuses to
admit that the influence of actions on happiness is a
most material and even predominant consideration in
many of the details of morals, however unwilling to
acknowledge it as the fundamental principle of
morality, and the source of moral obligation. I might
go much further, and say that to all those a priori mora-
lists who deem it necessary to argue at all, utilitarian
arguments are indispensable. It is not my present
purpose to criticize these thinkers ; but I cannot help
referring, for illustration, to a systematic treatise by
one of the most illustrious of them, the Metaphysics of
Ethics, by Kant. This remarkable man, whose system
of thought will long remain one of the landmarks in
the history of philosophical speculation, does, in the
treatise in question, lay down an universal first prin-
ciple as the origin and ground of moral obligation ; it
is this : — ' So act, that the rule on which thou actest
would admit of being adopted as a law by all rational
beings.' But when he begins to deduce from this
precept any of the actual duties of morality, he fails,
almost grotesquely, to show that there would be any
contradiction, any logical (not to say physical) impos-
sibility, in the adoption by all rational beings of the
most outrageously immoral rules of conduct. All
he shows is that the consequences of their universal

6 UTILITARIANISM.

adoption would be such as no one would choose to
incur.

On the present occasion, I shall, without further
discussion of the other theories, attempt to contribute
something towards the understanding and appreciation
of the Utilitarian or Happiness theory, and towards
such proof as it is susceptible of. It is evident that
this cannot be proof in the ordinary and popular
meaning of the term. Questions of ultimate ends are
not amenable to direct proof. "Whatever can be proved
to be good, must be so by being shown to be a means
to something admitted to be good without proof. The
medical art is proved to be good, by its conducing to
health ; but how is it possible to prove that health is
good? The art of music is good, for the reason,
among others, that it produces pleasure ; but what
proof is it possible to give that pleasure is good ? If,
then, it is asserted that there is a comprehensive
formula, including all things which are in themselves
good, and that whatever else is good, is not so as an
end, but as a mean, the formula may be accepted or
rejected, but is not a subject of what is commonly
understood by proof. We are not, however, to infer
that its acceptance or rejection must depend on blind
impulse, or arbitrary choice. There is a larger meaning
of the word proof, in which this question is as amen-
able to it as any other of the disputed questions of
philosophy. The subject is within the cognizance of
the rational faculty ; and neither does that faculty
deal with it solely in the way of intuition. Conside-
rations may be presented capable of determining the
intellect either to give or withhold its assent to the
doctrine ; and this is equivalent to proof.

GENERAL REMARKS. 7

We shall examine presently of what nature are these
considerations ; in what manner they apply to the
case, and what rational grounds, therefore, can be
given for accepting or rejecting the utilitarian formula.
But it is a preliminary condition of rational acceptance
or rejection, that the formula should be correctly under-
stood. I believe that the very imperfect notion ordi-
narily formed of its meaning, is the chief obstacle
which impedes its reception; and that could it be
cleared, even from only the grosser misconceptions,
the question would be greatly simplified, and a large
proportion of its difficulties removed. Before, there-
fore, I attempt to enter into the philosophical grounds
which can be given for assenting to the utilitarian
standard, I shall offer some illustrations of the doctrine
itself; with the view of showing more clearly what it
is, distinguishing it from what it is not, and disposing
of such of the practical objections to it as either
originate in, or are closely connected with, mistaken
interpretations of its meaning. Having thus pre-
pared the ground, I shall afterwards endeavour to
throw such light as I can upon the question, considered
as one of philosophical theory.

8 UTILITARIANISM.

CHAPTER II.

WHAT UTILITARIANISM IS.

A PASSING- remark is all that needs be given to
the ignorant blunder of supposing that those who
stand up for utility as the test of right and wrong,
use the term in that restricted and merely colloquial
sense in which utility is opposed to pleasure. An
apology is due to the philosophical opponents of
utilitarianism, for even the momentary appearance of
confounding them with any one capable of so absurd
a misconception ; which is the more extraorjdinary,
inasmuch as the contrary accusation, of referring
everything to pleasure, and that too in its grossest
form, is another of the common charges against
utilitarianism : and, as has been pointedly remarked
by an able writer, the same sort of persons, and often
the very same persons, denounce the theory ' as im-
practicably dry when the word utility precedes the
word pleasure, and as too practicably voluptuous when
the word pleasure precedes the word utility/ Those
who know anything about the matter are aware that
every writer, from Epicurus to Bentham, who main-
tained the theory of utility, meant by it, not some-
thing to be contradistinguished from pleasure, but
pleasure itself, together with exemption from pain ;
and instead of opposing the useful to the agreeable or
the ornamental, have always declared that the useful

ITS MEANING. 9

means these, among other things. Yet the common
herd, including the herd of writers, not only in news-
papers and periodicals, but in books of weight and
pretension, are perpetually falling into this shallow
mistake. Having caught up the word utilitarian,
while knowing nothing whatever about it but its
sound, they habitually express by it the rejection, or
the neglect, of pleasure in some of its forms ; of
beauty, of ornament, or of amusement. Nor is the
term thus ignorantly misapplied solely in disparage-
ment, but occasionally in compliment ; as though it
implied superiority to frivolity and the mere pleasures
of the moment. And this perverted use is the only
one in which the word is popularly known, and the
one from which the new generation are acquiring
their sole notion of its meaning. Those who intro-
duced the word, but who had for many years dis-
continued it as a distinctive appellation, may well feel
themselves called upon to resume it, if by doing so
they can hope to contribute anything towards rescuing
it from this utter degradation.*

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals,
Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds
that actions are right in proportion as they tend to
promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the

* The author of this essay has reason for believing himself to be the
first person who brought the word utilitarian into use. He did not
invent it, but adopted it from a passing expression in Mr. Gait's
Annals of the Parish. After using it as a designation for several years,
he and others abandoned it from a growing dislike to anything resem-
bling a badge or watchword of sectarian distinction. But as a name
for one single opinion, not a set of opinions — to denote the recognition
of utility as a standard, not any particular way of applying it — the term
supplies a want in the language, and offers, in many cases, a convenient
mode of avoiding tiresome circumlocution.

10 UTILITARIANISM.

reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended plea-
sure, and the absence of pain ; by unhappiness, pain,
and the privation of pleasure. To give a clear view
of the moral standard set up by the theory, much
more requires to be said ; in particular, what things
it includes in the ideas of pain and pleasure ; and to
what extent this is left an open question. But these
supplementary explanations do not affect the theory
of life on which this theory of morality is grounded —
namely, that pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the
only things desirable as ends ; and that all desirable
things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in
any other scheme) are desirable either for the pleasure
inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion
of pleasure and the prevention of pain.

Now, such a theory of life excites in many minds,
and among them in some of the most estimable in
feeling and purpose, inveterate dislike. To suppose
that life has (as they express it) no higher end than
pleasure — no better and nobler object of desire and
pursuit — they designate as utterly mean and grovel-
ling ; as a doctrine worthy only of swine, to whom the
followers of Epicurus were, at a very early period,
contemptuously likened; and modern holders of the
doctrine are occasionally made the subject of equally
polite comparisons by its German, French, and English
assailants.

When thus attacked, the Epicureans have always
answered, that it is not they, but their accusers, who
represent human nature in a degrading light; since
the accusation supposes human beings to be capable of
no pleasures except those of which swine are capable.
If this supposition were true, the charge could not be

ITS MEANING. 11

gainsaid, but would then be no longer an imputation ;
for if the sources of pleasure were precisely the same
to human beings and to swine, the rule of life which
is good enough for the one would be good enough for
the other. The comparison of the Epicurean life to
that of beasts is felt as degrading, precisely because a
beast's pleasures do not satisfy a human being's con-
ceptions of happiness. Human beings have faculties
more elevated than the animal appetites, and when
once made conscious of them, do not regard anything
as happiness which does not include their gratification.
I do not, indeed, consider the Epicureans to have been
by any means faultless in drawing out their scheme of
consequences from the utilitarian principle. To do
this in any sufficient manner, many Stoic, as well as
Christian elements require to be included. But there
is no known Epicurean theory of life which does not
assign to the pleasures of the intellect, of the feelings
and imagination, and of the moral sentiments, a much
higher value as pleasures than to those of mere sensa-
tion. It must be admitted, however, that utilitarian
writers in general have placed the superiority of
mental over bodily pleasures chiefly in the greater
permanency, safety, uncostliness, &c., of the former —
that is, in their circumstantial advantages rather than
in their intrinsic nature. And on all these points
utilitarians have fully proved their case ; but they
might have taken the other, and, as it may be called,
higher ground, with entire consistency. It is quite
compatible with the principle of utility to recognise
the fact, that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable
and more valuable than others. It would be absurd
that while, in estimating all other things, quality is

12 UTILITARIANISM.

considered as well as quantity, the estimation of
pleasures should be supposed to depend on quantity
alone.

If I am asked, what I mean by difference of quality
in pleasures, or what makes one pleasure more valuable
than another, merely as a pleasure, except its being
greater in amount, there is but one possible answer.
Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost
all who have experience of both give a decided pre-
ference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation
to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure. If
one of the two is, by those who are competently
acquainted with both, placed so far above the other
that they prefer it, even though knowing it to be at-
tended with a greater amount of discontent, and would
not resign it for any quantity of the other pleasure
which their nature is capable of, we are justified in
ascribing to the preferred enjoyment a superiority in
quality, so far outweighing quantity as to render it, in
comparison, of small account.

Now it is an unquestionable fact that those who
are equally acquainted with, and equally capable of
appreciating and enjoying, both, do give a most
marked preference to the manner of existence which
employs their higher faculties. Tew human creatures
would consent to be changed into any of the lower
animals, for a promise of the fullest allowance of a
beast's pleasures ; no intelligent human being would
consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an
ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would
be selfish and base, even though they should be per-
suaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better
satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs. They

ITS MEANING. 13

would not resign what they possess more than he, for
the most complete satisfaction of all the desires which
they have in common with him. If they ever fancy
they would, it is only in cases of unhappiness so
extreme, that to escape from it they would exchange
their lot for almost any other, however undesirable in
their own eyes. A being of higher faculties requires
more to make him happy, is capable probably of more
acute suffering, and certainly accessible to it at more
points, than one of an inferior type ; but in spite of
these liabilities, he can never really wish to sink into
what he feels to be a lower grade of existence. We
may give what explanation we please of this unwilling-
ness ; we may attribute it to pride, a name which is
given indiscriminately to some of the most and to
some of the least estimable feelings of which mankind
are capable : we may refer it to the love of liberty and
personal independence, an appeal to which was with
the Stoics one of the most effective means for the in-
culcation of it ; to the love of power, or to the love of
excitement, both of which do really enter into and
contribute to it : but its most appropriate appellation
is a sense of dignity, which all human beings possess
in one form or other, and in some, though by no means
in exact, proportion to their higher faculties, and
which is so essential a part of the happiness of those
in whom it is strong, that nothing which conflicts
with it could be, otherwise than momentarily, an
object of desire to them. Whoever supposes that this
preference takes place at a sacrifice of happiness — that
the superior being, in anything like equal circum-
stances, is not happier than the inferior — confounds
the two very different ideas, of happiness, and content.

14 UTILITARIANISM.

It is indisputable that the being whose capacities of
enjoyment are low, has the greatest chance of having
them fully satisfied ; and a highly endowed being will
always feel that any happiness which he can look for,
as the world is constituted, is imperfect. But he can
learn to bear its imperfections, if they are at all
bearable ; and they will not make him envy the being
who is indeed unconscious of the imperfections, but
only because he feels not at all the good which those
imperfections qualify. It is better to be a human
being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be
Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the
fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because
they only know their own side of the question. The
other party to the comparison knows both sides.

It may be objected, that many who are capable of
the higher pleasures, occasionally, under thd influence
of temptation, postpone them to the lower. But this
is quite compatible with a full appreciation of the in-
trinsic superiority of the higher. Men often, from
infirmity of character, make their election for the
nearer good, though they know it to be the less
valuable ; and this no less when the choice is between
two bodily pleasures, than when it is between bodily
and mental. They pursue sensual indulgences to the
injury of health, though perfectly aware that health is
the greater good. It may be further objected, that
many who begin with youthful enthusiasm for every-
thing noble, as they advance in years sink into indo-
lence and selfishness. But I do not believe that those
who undergo this very common change, voluntarily
choose the lower description of pleasures in preference
to the higher. I believe that before they devote

ITS MEANING. 15

themselves exclusively to the one, they have already
become incapable of the other. Capacity for the
nobler feelings is in most natures a very tender plant,
easily killed, not only by hostile influences, but by
mere want of sustenance; and in the majority of
young persons it speedily dies away if the occupations
to which their position in life has devoted them, and
the society into which it has thrown them, are not
favourable to keeping that higher capacity in exercise.
Men lose their high aspirations as they lose their in-
tellectual tastes, because they have not time or oppor-
tunity for indulging them ; and they addict themselves
to inferior pleasures, not because they deliberately
prefer them, but because they are either the only ones
to which they have access, or the only ones which
they are any longer capable of enjoying. It may be
questioned whether any one who has remained equally
susceptible to both classes of pleasures, ever knowingly
and calmly preferred the lower ; though many, in all
ages, have broken down in an ineffectual attempt to
combine both.

From this verdict of the only competent judges, I
apprehend there can be no appeal. On a question
which is the best worth having of two pleasures, or
which of two modes of existence is the most grateful
to the feelings, apart from its moral attributes and
from its consequences, the judgment of those who are
qualified by knowledge of both, or, if they differ, that
of the majority among them, must be admitted as
final. And there needs be the less hesitation to accept
this judgment respecting the quality of pleasures, since
there is no other tribunal to be referred to even on
the question of quantity. What means are there of

1 6 UTILITARIANISM.

determining which is the acutest of two pains, or the
intensest of two pleasurable sensations, except the
general suffrage of those who are familiar with both ?
Neither pains nor pleasures are homogeneous, and
pain is always heterogeneous with pleasure. What is
there to decide whether a particular pleasure is worth
purchasing at the cost of a particular pain, except the
feelings and judgment of the experienced? When,
therefore, those feelings and judgment declare the
pleasures derived from the higher faculties to be pre-
ferable in kind, apart from the question of intensity,
to those of which the animal nature, disjoined from
the higher faculties, is suspectible, they are entitled
on this subject to the same regard.

I have dwelt on this point, as being a necessary
part of a perfectly just conception of Utility or
Happiness, considered as the directive rule of human
conduct. But it is by no means an indispensable
condition to the acceptance of the utilitarian standard;
for that standard is not the agent's own greatest hap-
piness, but the greatest amount of happiness altoge-
ther ; and if it may possibly be doubted whether a
noble character is always the happier for its noble-
ness, there can be no doubt that it makes other peop
happier, and that the world in general is immensely
a gainer by it. Utilitarianism, therefore, could only
attain its end by the general cultivation of nobleness
of character, even if each individual were only bene-
fited by the nobleness of others, and his own, so far
as happiness is concerned, were a sheer deduction
from the benefit. But the bare enunciation of such
an absurdity as this last, renders refutation super-
fluous.

ITS MEANING. 17

According to the Greatest Happiness Principle, as
above explained, the ultimate end, with reference to
and for the sake of which all other things are desirable
(whether we are considering our own good or that of
other people), is an existence exempt as far as possible
from pain, and as rich as possible in enjoyments, both
in point of quantity and quality ; the test of quality,
and the rule for measuring it against quantity, being
the preference felt by those who in their opportunities
of experience, to which must be added their habits of
self-consciousness and self-observation, are best fur-
nished with the means of comparison. This, being,
according to the utilitarian opinion, the end of human
action, is necessarily also the standard of morality;
which may accordingly be defined, the rules and
precepts for human conduct, by the observance of
which an existence such as has been described might
be, to the greatest extent possible, secured to all
mankind ; and not to them only, but, so far as the
nature of things admits, to the whole sentient creation.

Against this doctrine, however, arises another class
of objectors, who say that happiness, in any form,
cannot be the rational purpose of human life and
action ; because, in the first place, it is unattainable :
and they contemptuously ask, what right hast thou
to be happy? a question which Mr. Carlyle clenches
by the addition, What right, a short time ago, hadst
thou even to be ? Next, they say, that men can do
loithout happiness ; that all noble human beings have
felt this, and could not have become noble but by
learning the lesson of Entsagen, or renunciation ;
which lesson, thoroughly learnt and submitted to,

IS UTILITARIANISM.

they affirm to be the beginning and necessary con-
dition of all virtue.

The first of these objections would go to the root
of the matter were it well founded ; for if no happi-
ness is to be had at all by human beings, the attain-
ment of it cannot be the end of morality, or of any
rational conduct. Though, even in that case, some-
thing might still be said for the utilitarian theory :
since utility includes not solely the pursuit of happi-
ness, but the prevention or mitigation of unhappiness :
and if the former aim be chimerical, there will be all
the greater scope and more imperative need for the
latter, so long at least as mankind think fit to live,
and do not take refuge in the simultaneous act of
suicide recommended under certain conditions by
Novalis. When, however, it is thus positively asserted
to be impossible that human life should be ttappy, the
assertion, if not something like a verbal quibble, is at
least an exaggeration. If by happiness be meant a
continuity of highly pleasurable excitement, it is
evident enough that this is impossible. A state of
exalted pleasure lasts only moments, or in some cases,
and with some intermissions, hours or days, and is the
occasional brilliant flash of enjoyment, not its perma-
nent and steady flame. Of this the philosophers who
have taught that happiness is the end of life were as
fully aware as those who taunt them. The happiness
which they meant was not a life of rapture ; but '
moments of such, in an existence made up of few and
transitory pains, many and various pleasures, with a
decided predominance of the active over the passive,
and having as the foundation of the whole, not to
expect more from life than it is capable of bestowing.

ITS MEANING. 19

'A life thus composed, to those who have been fortu-
nate enough to obtain it, has always appeared worthy
of the name of happiness. And such an existence is
even now the lot of man}7', during some considerable
portion of their lives. The present wretched educa-
tion, and wretched social arrangements, are the only
real hindrance to its being attainable by almost all.

The objectors perhaps may doubt whether human
beings, if taught to consider happiness as the end of
life, would be satisfied with such a moderate share of
it. But great numbers of mankind have been satis-
fied with much less. The main constituents of a
satisfied life appear to be two, either of which by
itself is often found sufficient for the purpose : tran-
quillity, and excitement. With much tranquillity,
many find that they can be content with very little
pleasure : with much excitement, many can reconcile
themselves to a considerable quantity of pain. There
is assuredly no inherent impossibility in enabling even
the mass of mankind to unite both ; since the two are
so far from being incompatible that they are in natural
alliance, the prolongation of either being a preparation
for, and exciting a wish for, the other. It is only
those in whom indolence amounts to a vice, that do
not desire excitement after an interval of repose : it is
only those in whom the need of excitement is a disease,
that feel the tranquillity which follows excitement
dull and insipid, instead of pleasurable in direct pro-
portion to the excitement which preceded it. When
people who are tolerably fortunate in their outward
lot do not find in life sufficient enjoyment to make it
valuable to them, the cause generally is, caring for
nobody but themselves. To those who have neither

c2

20 UTILITARIANISM.

public nor private affections, the excitements of life
are much curtailed, and in any case dwindle in value
as the time approaches when all selfish interests must
be terminated by death : while those who leave after
them objects of personal affection, and especially those
who have also cultivated a fellow-feeling with the
collective interests of mankind, retain as lively an in-
terest in life on the eve of death as in the vigour of
youth and health. Next to selfishness, the principal
cause which makes life unsatisfactory is want of
mental cultivation. A cultivated mind — I do not
mean that of a philosopher, but any mind to which
the fountains of knowledge have been opened, and
which has been taught, in any tolerable degree, to
exercise its faculties — finds sources of inexhaustible
interest in all that surrounds it; in the objects of
nature, the achievements of art, the imagiAations of
poetry, the incidents of history, the ways of mankind,
past and present, and their prospects in the future.
It. is possible, indeed, to become indifferent to all this,
and that too without having exhausted a thousandth
part of it; but only when one has had from the
beginning no moral or human interest in these things,
and has sought in them only the gratification of
curiosity.

Now there is absolutely no reason in the nature of
things why an amount of mental culture sufficient to
give an intelligent interest in these objects of contem-
plation, should not be the inheritance of every one
born in a civilized country. As little is there an in-
herent necessity that any human being should be a
selfish egotist, devoid of every feeling or care but those
which centre in his own miserable individuality. Some-

ITS MEANING. 21

thing far superior to this is sufficiently common even
now, to give ample earnest of what the human species
may be made. Genuine private affections, and a
sincere interest in the public good, are possible, though
in unequal degrees, to every rightly brought up human
being. In a world in which there is so much to inte-
rest, so much to enjoy, and so much also to correct
and improve, every one who has this moderate amount
of moral and intellectual requisites is capable of an
existence which may be called enviable ; and unless
such a person, through bad laws, or subjection to the
will of others, is denied the liberty to use the sources
of happiness within his reach, he will not fail to find
this enviable existence, if he escape the positive evils
of life, the great sources of physical and mental suf-
fering— such as indigence, disease, and the unkind-
ness, worthlessness, or premature loss of objects of
affection. The main stress of the problem lies, there-
fore, in the contest with these calamities, from which
it is a rare good fortune entirely to escape ; which, as
things now are, cannot be obviated, and often cannot
be in any material degree mitigated. Yet no one
whose opinion deserves a moment's consideration can
doubt that most of the great positive evils of the
world are in themselves removable, and will, if human
affairs continue to improve, be in the end reduced
within narrow limits. Poverty, in any sense implying
suffering, may be completely extinguished by the
wisdom of society, combined with the good sense and
providence of individuals. Even that most intractable
of enemies, disease, may be indefinitely reduced in
dimensions by good physical and moral education,
and proper control of noxious influences ; while the

22 UTILITARIANISM.

progress of science holds out a promise for the future
of still more direct conquests over this detestable foe.
And every advance in that direction relieves us from
some, not only of the chances which cut short our
own lives, hut, what concerns us still more, which
deprive us of those in whom our happiness is wrapt
up. As for vicissitudes of fortune, and other disap-
pointments connected with worldly circumstances,
these are principally the effect either of gross impru-
dence, of ill-regulated desires, or of bad or imperfect
social institutions. All the grand sources, in short,
of human suffering are in a great degree, many of
them almost entirely, conquerable by human care and
effort ; and though their removal is grievously slow —
though a long succession of generations will perish in
the breach before the conquest is completed, and this
world becomes all that, if will and knowledge were
not wanting, it might easily be made — yet every
mind sufficiently intelligent and generous to bear a
part, however small and un conspicuous, in the endea-
vour, will draw a noble enjoyment from the contest
itself, which he would not for any bribe in the form
of selfish indulgence consent to be without.

And this leads to the true estimation of what is
said by the objectors concerning the possibility, and
the obligation, of learning to do without happiness.
Unquestionably it is possible to do without happiness ;
it is done involuntarily by nineteen-twentieths of
mankind, even in those parts of our present world
which are least deep in barbarism ; and it often has
to be done voluntarily by the hero or the martyr, for
the sake of something which he prizes more than his
individual happiness. But this something, what is

ITS MEANING. 23

it, unless the happiness of others, or some of the
requisites of happiness ? It is noble to be capable of
resigning entirely one's own portion of happiness, or
chances of it : but, after all, this self- sacrifice must be
for some end ; it is not its own end ; and if we are
told that its end is not happiness, but virtue, which is
better than happiness, I ask, would the sacrifice be
made if the hero or martyr did not believe that it
would earn for others immunity from similar sacri-
fices ? Would it be made if he thought that his
renunciation of happiness for himself would produce
no fruit for any of his fellow creatures, but to make
their lot like his, and place them also in the condition
of persons who have renounced happiness ? All honour
to those who can abnegate for themselves the personal
enjoyment of life, when by such renunciation they
contribute worthily to increase the amount of happi-
ness in the world ; but he who does it, or professes to
do it, for any other purpose, is no more deserving of
admiration than the ascetic mounted on his pillar.
He may be an inspiriting proof of what men can do,
but assuredly not an example of what they should.

Though it is only in a very imperfect state of the
world's arrangements that any one can best serve the
happiness of others by the absolute sacrifice of his
own, yet so long as the world is in that imperfect
state, I fully acknowledge that the readiness to make
such a sacrifice is the highest virtue which can be
found in man. I will add, that in this condition of
the world, paradoxical as the assertion may be, the
conscious ability to do without happiness gives the
best prospect of realizing such happiness as is attain-
able. For nothing except that consciousness, can

24 UTILITARIANISM.

raise a person above the chances of life, by making
him feel that, let fate and fortune do their worst, they
have not power to subdue him : which, once felt, frees
him from excess of anxiety concerning the evils of
life, and enables him, like many a Stoic in the worst
times of the Eoman Empire, to cultivate in tranquil-
lity the sources of satisfaction accessible to him, with-
out concerning himself about the uncertainty of their
duration, any more than about their inevitable end.

Meanwhile, let utilitarians never cease to claim the
morality of self devotion as a possession which belongs
by as good a right to them, as either to the Stoic or
to the Transcendentalist. The utilitarian morality
does recognise in human beings the power of sacri-
ficing their own greatest good for the good of others.
It only refuses to admit that the sacrifice is itself a
good. A sacrifice which does not increase, or/ tend to
increase, the sum total of happiness, it considers as
wasted. The only self-renunciation which it applauds,
is devotion to the happiness, or to some of the means
of happiness, of others ; either of mankind collectively,
or of individuals within the limits imposed by the
collective interests of mankind.

I must again repeat, what the assailants of utili-
tarianism seldom have the justice to acknowledge, that
the happiness which forms the utilitarian standard of
what is right in conduct, is not the agent's own hap-
piness, but that of all concerned. As between his
own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism re-
quires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested
and benevolent spectator. In the golden rule of Jesus
of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics
of utility. To do as you would be done by, and to

' ITS MEANING. 25

love your neighbour as yourself, constitute the ideal
perfection of utilitarian morality. As the means of
making the nearest approach to this ideal, utility
would enjoin, first, that laws and social arrangements
should place the happiness, or (as speaking practically
it may be called) the interest, of every individual, as
nearly as possible in harmony with the interest of the
whole; and secondly, that education and opinion,
which have so vast a power over human character,
should so use that power as to establish in the mind
of every individual an indissoluble association between
his own happiness and the good of the whole ; espe-
cially between his own happiness and the practice of
such modes of conduct, negative and positive, as regard
for the universal happiness prescribes; so that not
only he may be unable to conceive the possibility of
happiness to himself, consistently with conduct opposed
to the general good, but also that a direct impulse to
promote the general good may be in every individual
one of the habitual motives of action, and the senti-
ments connected therewith may fill a large and pro-
minent place in every human being's sentient existence.
If the impugners of the utilitarian morality repre-
sented it to their own minds in this its true character,
I know not what recommendation possessed by any
other morality they could possibly affirm to be wanting
to it ; what more beautiful or more exalted develop-
ments of human nature any other ethical system can
be supposed to foster, or what springs of action, not
accessible to the utilitarian, such systems rely on for
giving effect to their mandates.

The objectors to utilitarianism cannot always be
charged with representing it in a discreditable light.

20 UTILITARIANISM.

On the contrary, those among them who entertain
anything like a just idea of its disinterested character,
sometimes find fault with its standard as being too
high for humanity. They say it is exacting too much
to require that people shall always act from the in-
ducement of promoting the general interests of society.
But this is to mistake the very meaning of a standard
of morals, and confound the rule of action with the
motive of it. It is the business of ethics to tell us
what are our duties, or by what test we may know
them ; but no system of ethics requires that the sole
motive of all we do shall be a feeling of duty ; on the
contrary, ninety-nine hundredths of all our actions
are done from other motives, and rightly so done, if
the rule of duty does not condemn them. It is the
more unjust to utilitarianism that this particular mis-
apprehension should be made a ground of objection
to it, inasmuch as utilitarian moralists have gone
beyond almost all others in affirming that the motive
has nothing to do with the morality of the action,
though much with the worth of the agent. He who
saves a fellow creature from drowning does what is
morally right, whether his motive be duty, or the hope
of being paid for his trouble ; he who betrays the
friend that trusts him, is guilty of a crime, even if his
object be to serve another friend to whom he is under
greater obligations. But to speak only of actions
done from the motive of duty, and in direct obedience
to principle : it is a misapprehension of the utilitarian
mode of thought, to conceive it as implying that people
should fix their minds upon so wide a generality as the
world, or society at large. The great majority of good
actions are intended not for the benefit of the world,

ITS MEANING. 27

but for that of individuals, of which the good of the
world is made up ; and the thoughts of the most
virtuous man need not on these occasions travel heyond
the particular persons concerned, except so far as is
necessary to assure himself that in benefiting them he
is not violating the rights, that is, the legitimate and
authorized expectations, of any one else. The multi-
plication of happiness is, according to the utilitarian
ethics, the object of virtue : the occasions on which
any person (except one in a thousand) has it in his
power to do this on an extended scale, in .other words
to be a public benefactor, are but exceptional ; and on
these occasions alone is he called on to consider public
utility; in every other case, private utility, the interest
or happiness of some few persons, is all he has to
attend to. Those alone the influence of whose actions
extends to society in general, need concern themselves
habitually about so large an object. In the case of
abstinences indeed — of things which people forbear to
do from moral considerations, though the consequences
in the particular case might be beneficial — it would
be unworthy of an intelligent agent not to be con-
sciously aware that the action is of a class which, if
practised generally, would be generally injurious, and
that this is the ground of the obligation to abstain from
it. The amount of regard for the public interest im-
plied in this recognition, is no greater than is demanded
by every system of morals, for they all enjoin to abstain
from whatever is manifestly pernicious to society.

The same considerations dispose of another reproach
against the doctrine of utility, founded on a still
grosser misconception of the purpose of a standard of
morality, and of the very meaning of the words right

28 UTILITARIANISM.

and wrong. It is often affirmed that utilitarianism
renders men cold and unsympathizing ; that it chills
their moral feelings towards individuals ; that it makes
them regard only the dry and hard consideration of
the consequences of actions, not taking into their
moral estimate the qualities from which those actions
emanate. If the assertion means that they do not
allow their judgment respecting the rightness or wroiig-
ness of an action to be influenced by their opinion of
the qualities of the person who does it, this is a com-
plaint not against utilitarianism, but against having
any standard of morality at all ; for certainly no known
ethical standard decides an action to be good or bad
because it is done by a good or a bad man, still less
because done by an amiable, a brave, or a benevolent
man, or the contrary. These considerations are rele-
vant, not to the estimation of actions, but of ^persons ;
and there is nothing in the utilitarian theory incon-
sistent with the fact that there are other things which
interest us in persons besides the rightness and wrong-
ness of their actions. The Stoics, indeed, with the
paradoxical misuse of language which was part of their
system, and by which they strove to raise themselves
above all concern about anything but virtue, were fond
of saying that he who has that has everything ; that
he, and only he, is rich, is beautiful, is a king. But
no claim of this description is made for the virtuous
man by the utilitarian doctrine. Utilitarians are quite
aware that there are other desirable possessions and
qualities besides virtue, and are perfectly willing to
allow to all of them their full worth. They are also
aware that a right action does not necessarily indicate
a virtuous character, and that actions which are blame-

ITS MEANING. 29

able, often proceed from qualities entitled to praise.
When this is apparent in any particular case, it modifies
their estimation, not certainly of the act, but of the
agent. I grant that they are, notwithstanding, of
opinion, that in the long run the best proof of a good
character is good actions ; and resolutely refuse to con-
sider any mental disposition as good, of which the
predominant tendency is to produce bad conduct.
This makes them unpopular with many people ; but
it is an unpopularity which they must share with
every one who regards the distinction between right
and wrong in a serious light ; and the reproach is not
one which a conscientious utilitarian need be anxious
to repel.

If no more be meant by the objection than that
many utilitarians look on the morality of actions, as
measured by the utilitarian standard, with too exclu-
sive a regard, and do not lay sufficient stress upon the
other beauties of character which go towards making
a human being loveable or admirable, this may be
admitted. Utilitarians who have cultivated their
moral feelings, but not their sympathies nor their
artistic perceptions, do fall into this mistake ; and so
do all other moralists under the same conditions.
What can be said in excuse for other moralists is
equally available for them, namely, that if there is to
be any error, it is better that it should be on that side.
As a matter of fact, we may affirm that among utili-
tarians as among adherents of other systems, there is
every imaginable degree of rigidity and of laxity in
the application of their standard : some are even puri-
tanically rigorous, while others are as indulgent as
can possibly be desired by sinner or by sentimentalist.

:>() UTILITARIANISM.

I>ui on the vvliolc, adoctrino which lyings prominently
forward the interest that mankind have in the n -
pression and prevention of conduct which violates the
moral law, is likely to he inferior to no other in turning
the sanctions of opinion against such violations. It
is true, the question, What does violate the moral
law ? is one on which those who recognise different
standards of morality are likely now and then to
differ. But difference of opinion on moral questions was
not first introduced into the world hy utilitarianism,
\vliile that doctrine does supply, if not always an easy,
at all events a tangible and intelligible mode of deciding
such differences.

It may not be superfluous to notice a few more of
the common misapprehensions of utilitarian ethics,
even those which are so obvious and gross that it
might appear impossible for any person of candour
and intelligence to fall into them; since persons, even
of considerable mental endowments, often give them-
selves so little trouble to understand the bearings of
any opinion against which they entertain a prejudice,
und men are in general so little conscious of this
voluntary ignorance as a defect, that the vulgarest
misunderstandings of ethical doctrines are continually
met with in the deliberate writings of persons of the
greatest pretensions both to high principle and to philo-
sophy. We not uncommonly hear the doctrine of
utility inveighed against as a godless doctrine. If it
be necessary to say anything at all against so mere an
assumption, we may say that the question depends
upon what idea we have formed of the moral character
of the Deity. If it be a true, belief that God desires,

ITS MEANING. 31

above all things, the happiness of his creatures, and
that this was his purpose in their creation, utility is
not only not a godless doctrine, but more profoundly
religious than any other. If it be meant that utili-
tarianism does not recognise the revealed will of God
as the supreme law of morals, I answer, that an utili-
tarian who believes in the perfect goodness and wisdom
of God, necessarily believes that whatever God has
thought fit to reveal on the subject of morals, must
fulfil the requirements of utility in a supreme degree.
But others besides utilitarians have been of opinion
that the Christian revelation was intended, and is
fitted, to inform the hearts and minds of mankind
with a spirit which should enable them to find for
themselves what is right, and incline them to do it
when found, rather than to tell them, except in a very
general way, what it is ; and that we need a doctrine
of ethics, carefully followed out, to interpret to us the
will of God. Whether this opinion is correct or not,
it is superfluous here to discuss ; since whatever aid
religion, either natural or revealed, can afford to ethical
investigation, is as open to the utilitarian moralist as
to any other. He can use it as the testimony of God to
the usefulness or hurtfulness of any given course of
action, by as good a right as others can use it for the
indication of a transcendental law, having no connexion
with usefulness or with happiness.

Again, Utility is often summarily stigmatized as an
immoral doctrine by giving it the name of Expediency,
and taking advantage of the popular use of that term
to contrast it with Principle. But the Expedient, in
the sense in which it is opposed to the Eight, gene-
rally means that which is expedient for the particular

32 UTILITARIANISM.

interest of the agent himself; as when a Minister
sacrifices the interests of his country to keep himself
in place. "When it means anything better than this,
it means that which is expedient for some immediate
object, some temporary purpose, but which violates a
rule whose observance is expedient in a much higher
degree. The Expedient, in this sense, instead of being
the same thing with the useful, is a branch of the
hurtful. Thus, it would often be expedient, for the
purpose of getting over some momentary embarrass-
ment, or attaining some object immediately useful to
ourselves or others, to tell a lie. But inasmuch as
the cultivation in ourselves of a sensitive feeling on
the subject of veracity, is one of the most useful, and
the enfeeblement of that feeling one of the most
hurtful, things to which our conduct can be instru-
mental; and inasmuch as any, even unintentional,
deviation from truth, does that much towards weaken-
ing the trustworthiness of human assertion, which is
not only the principal support of all present social
well-being, but the insufficiency of which .does more
than any one thing that can be named to keep back
civilization, virtue, everything on which human hap-
piness on the largest scale depends ; we feel that the
violation, for a present advantage, of a rule of such
transcendant expediency, is not expedient, and that he
who, for the sake of a convenience to himself or to some
other individual, does what depends on him to deprive
mankind of the good, and inflict upon them the evil,
involved in the greater or less reliance which they can
place in each other's word, acts the part of one of their
worst enemies. Tet that even this rule, sacred as it is,
admits of possible exceptions, is acknowledged by all

ITS MEANING. 33

moralists ; the chief of which is when the withholding
of some fact (as of information from a malefactor, or
of bad news from a person dangerously ill) would save
an individual (especially an individual other than
oneself) from great and unmerited evil, and when the
withholding can only be effected by denial. But in
order that the exception may not extend itself beyond
the need, and may have the least possible effect in
weakening reliance on veracity, it ought to be recog-
nized, and, if possible, its limits defined ; and if the
principle of utility is good for anything, it must be
good for weighing these conflicting utilities against
one another, and marking out the region within which
one or the other preponderates.

Again, defenders of utility often find themselves
called upon to reply to such objections as this — that
there is not time, previous to action, for calculating
and weighing the effects of any line of conduct on the
general happiness. This is exactly as if any one were
to say that it is impossible to guide our conduct by
Christianity, because there is not time, on every occa-
sion on which anything has to be done, to read through
the Old and New Testaments. The answer to the
objection is, that there has been ample time, namely,
the whole past duration of the human species. Dur-
ing all that time mankind have been learning by ex-
perience the tendencies of actions ; on which experi-
ence all the prudence, as well as all the morality of
life, are dependent. People talk as if the commence-
ment of this course of experience had hitherto been
put off, and as if, at the moment when some man feels
tempted to meddle with the property or life of another,
he had to begin considering for the first time whether

D

34 UTILITARIANISM.

murder and theft are injurious to liuman happiness.
Even then I do not think that he would find the
question very puzzling ; but, at all events, the matter
is now done to his hand. It is truly a whimsical
supposition that if mankind were agreed in consider-
ing utility to be the test of morality, they would
remain without any agreement as to what is useful,
and would take no measures for having their notions
on the subject taught to the young, and enforced by
law and opinion. There is no difficulty in proving
any ethical standard whatever to work ill, if we sup-
pose universal idiocy to be conjoined with it ; but on
any hypothesis short of that, mankind must by this
time have acquired positive beliefs as to the effects of
some actions on their happiness ; and the beliefs
which have thus come down are the rules of morality
for the multitude, and for the philosopher until he
has succeeded in finding better. That philosophers
might easily do this, even now, on many subjects ;
that the received code of ethics is by no means of
divine right ; and that mankind have still much to
learn as to the effects of actions on the general happi-
ness, I admit, or rather, earnestly maintain. The
corollaries from the principle of utility, like the pre-
cepts of every practical art, admit of indefinite improve-
ment, and, in a progressive state of the human mind,
their improvement is perpetually going on. But to con-
sider the rules of morality as improvable, is one thing ;
to pass over the intermediate generalizations entirely,
and endeavour to test each individual action directly
by the first principle, is another. It is a strange
notion that the acknowledgment of a first principle is
inconsistent with the admission of secondary ones.

ITS MEANING. 35

To inform a traveller respecting the place of his ulti-
mate destination, is not to forbid the use of land-
marks and direction-posts on the way. The proposi-
tion that happiness is the end and aim of morality,
does not mean that no road ought to be laid down to
that goal, or that persons going thither should not be
advised to take one direction rather than another.
Men really ought to leave off talking a kind of non-
sense on this subject, which they would neither talk
nor listen to on other matters of practical concernment.
Nobody argues that the art of navigation is not
founded on astronomy, because sailors cannot wait to
calculate the Nautical Almanack. Being rational crea-
tures, they go to sea with it ready calculated ; and all
rational creatures go out upon the sea of life with
their minds made up on the common questions of
right and wrong, as well as on many of the far more
difficult questions of wise and foolish. And this, as
long as foresight is a human quality, it is to be pre-
sumed they will continue to do. Whatever we adopt
as the fundamental principle of morality, we require
subordinate principles to apply it by ; the impossi-
bility of doing without them, being common to all
systems, can afford no argument against any one in
particular ; but gravely to argue as if no such secondary
principles could be had, and as if mankind had re-
mained till now, and always must remain, without
drawing any general conclusions from the experience
of human life, is as high a pitch, I think, as absur-
dity has ever reached in philosophical controversy.

The remainder of the stock arguments against
utilitarianism mostly consist in laying to its charge
the common infirmities of human nature, and the

D 2

36 UTILITARIANISM.

general difficulties which embarrass conscientious
persons in shaping their course through life. We are
told that an utilitarian will be apt to make his own
particular case an exception to moral rules, and, when
under temptation, will see an utility in the breach of
a rule, greater than he will see in its observance.
But is utility the only creed which is able to furnish
us with excuses for evil doing, and means of cheating
our own conscience ? They are afforded in abundance
by all doctrines which recognise as a fact in morals
the existence of conflicting considerations ; which all
doctrines do, that have been believed by sane persons.
It is not the fault of any creed, but of the complicated
nature of human affairs, that rules of conduct cannot
be so framed as to .require no exceptions, and that
hardly any kind of action can safely be laid down
as either always obligatory or always condefnnable.
There is no ethical creed which does not temper the
rigidity of its laws, by giving a certain latitude, under
the moral responsibility of the agent, for accommoda-
tion to peculiarities of circumstances ; and under every
creed, at the opening thus made, self-deception and
dishonest casuistry get in. There exists no moral
system under which there do not arise unequivocal
cases of conflicting obligation. These are the real
difficulties, the knotty points both in the theory of
ethics, and in the conscientious guidance of personal
conduct. They are overcome practically with greater
or with less success according to the intellect and
virtue of the individual; but it can hardly be pre-
tended that any one will be the less qualified for
dealing with them, from possessing an ultimate stan-
dard to which conflicting rights and duties can be

ITS MEANING. 37

referred. If utility is the ultimate source of moral
obligations, utility may be invoked to decide between
them when their demands are incompatible. Though
the application of the standard may be difficult, it is
better than none at all : while in other systems, the
moral laws all claiming independent authority, there
is no common umpire entitled to interfere between
them ; their claims to precedence one over another
rest on little better than sophistry, and unless deter-
mined, as they generally are, by the unacknowledged
influence of considerations of utility, afford a free
scope for the action of personal desires and partialities.
We must remember that only in these cases of conflict
between secondary principles is it requisite that first
principles should be appealed to. There is no case of
moral obligation in which some secondary principle is
not involved ; and if only one, there can seldom be
any real doubt which one it is, in the mind of any
person by whom the principle itself is recognised.

38 UTILITARIANISM.

CHAPTEE III.

OF THE ULTIMATE SANCTION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF
UTILITiT.

rPHE question is often asked, and properly so, in

•*• regard to any supposed moral standard — What is

its sanction ? what are the motives to obey it ? or

more specifically, what is the source of its obligation ?

whence does it derive its binding force? It is a

necessary part of moral philosophy to provide the

answer to this question; which, though frequently

assuming the shape of an objection to the utilitarian

morality, as if it had some special applicability to that

above others, really arises in regard to all standards.

It arises, in fact, whenever a person is called on to

adopt a standard, or refer morality to any basis on

which he has not been accustomed to rest it. For the

customary morality, that which education and opinion

have consecrated, is the only one which presents itself

to the mind with the feeling of being in itself obli-

gatory ; and when a person is asked to believe that

this morality derives its obligation from some general

principle round which custom has not thrown the

same halo, the assertion is to him a paradox ; the

supposed corollaries seem to have a more binding force

than the original theorem ; the superstructure seems

to stand better without, than with, what is represented

as its foundation. He says to himself, I feel that I

ITS SANCTIONS. 39

am bound not to rob or murder, betray or deceive ;
but why am I bound to promote the general happi-
ness ? If my own happiness lies in something else,
why may I not give that the preference ?

If the view adopted by the utilitarian philosophy
of the nature of the moral sense be correct, this
difficulty will always present itself, until the influences
which form moral character have taken the same hold
of the principle which they have taken of some of the
consequences — until, by the improvement of educa-
tion, the feeling of unity with our fellow-creatures
shall be (what it cannot be denied that Christ in-
tended it to be) as deeply rooted in our character, and
to our own consciousness as completely a part of our
nature, as the horror of crime is in an ordinarily well
brought up young person. In the mean time, how-
ever, the difficulty has no peculiar application to the
doctrine of utility, but is inherent in every attempt to
analyse morality and reduce it to principles ; which,
unless the principle is already in men's minds invested
with as much sacredness as any of its applications,
always seems to divest them of a part of their
sanctity.

The principle of utility either has, or there is no
reason why it might not have, all the sanctions which
belong to any other system of morals. Those sanc-
tions are either external or internal. Of the external
sanctions it is not necessary to speak at any length.
They are, the hope of favour and the fear of displea-
sure from our fellow creatures or from the Huler of
the Universe, along with whatever we may have of
sympathy or affection for them, or of love and awe of
Him, inclining us to do his will independently of

40 UTILITARIANISM.

selfish consequences. There is evidently no reason
why all these motives for observance should not
attach themselves to the utilitarian morality, as com-
pletely and as powerfully as to any other. Indeed,
those of them which refer to our fellow creatures are
sure to do so, in proportion to the amount of general
intelligence ; for whether there he any other ground
of moral obligation than the general happiness or
not, men do desire happiness ; and however imperfect
may be their own practice, they desire and commend
all conduct in others towards themselves, by which
they think their happiness is promoted. With regard
to the religious motive, if men believe, as most profess
to do, in the goodness of God, those who think that
conduciveness to the general happiness is the essence,
or even only the criterion of good, must necessarily
believe that it is also that which God approves.
The whole force therefore of external reward and
punishment, whether physical or moral, and whether
proceeding from God or from our fellow men, together
with all that the capacities of human nature admit,
of disinterested devotion to either, become available to
enforce the utilitarian morality, in proportion as that
morality is recognized ; and the more powerfully, the
more the appliances of education and general cultiva-
tion are bent to the purpose.

So far as to external sanctions. The internal sanc-
tion of duty, whatever our standard of duty may be,
is one and the same — a feeling in our own mind ; a
pain, more or less intense, attendant on violation of
duty, which in properly cultivated moral natures rises,
in the more serious cases, into shrinking from it as an
impossibility. This feeling, when disinterested, and

ITS SANCTIONS. 41

connecting itself with the pure idea of duty, and not
with some particular form of it, or with any of the
merely accessory circumstances, is the essence of Con-
science; though in that complex phenomenon as it
actually exists, the simple fact is in general all en-
crusted over with collateral associations, derived from
sympathy, from love, and still more from fear ; from
all the forms of religious feeling • from the recollec-
tions of childhood and of all our past life ; from self-
esteem, desire of the esteem of others, arid occasionally
even self-abasement. This extreme complication is, I
apprehend, the origin of the sort of mystical character
which, by a tendency of the human mind of which
there are many other examples, is apt to be attributed
to the idea of moral obligation, and which leads people
to believe that the idea cannot possibly attach itself
to any other objects than those which, by a supposed
mysterious law, are found in our present experience to
excite it. Its binding force, however, consists in the
existence of a mass of feeling which must be broken
through in order to do what violates our standard of
right, and which, if we do nevertheless violate that
standard, will probably have to be encountered after-
wards in the form of remorse. Whatever theory we
have of the nature or origin of conscience, this is what
essentially constitutes it.

The ultimate sanction, therefore, of all morality
(external motives apart) being a subjective feeling in
our own minds, I see nothing embarrassing to those
whose standard is utility, in the question, what is the
sanction of that particular standard ? We may answer,
the same as of all other moral standards — the con-
scientious feelings of mankind. Undoubtedly this

42 UTILITARIANISM.

sanction has no binding efficacy on those who do not
possess the feelings it appeals to ; but neither will
these persons be more obedient to any other moral
principle than to the utilitarian one. On them
morality of any kind has no hold but through the
external sanctions. Meanwhile the feelings exist, a
fact in human nature, the reality of which, and the
great power with which they are capable of acting on
those in whom they have been duly cultivated, are
proved by experience. No reason has ever been
shown why they may not be cultivated to as great in-
tensity in connexion with the utilitarian, as with any
other rule of morals.

There is, I am aware, a disposition to believe that
a person who sees in moral obligation a transcendental
fact, an objective reality belonging to the province of
' Things in themselves/ is likely to be more obedient
to it than one who believes it to be entirely subjective,
having its seat in human consciousness only. But
whatever a person's opinion may be on this point of
Ontology, the force he is really urged by is his own
subjective feeling, and is exactly measured by its
strength. No one's belief that Duty is an objective
reality is stronger than the belief that God is so ; yet
the belief in Grod, apart from the expectation of actual
reward and punishment, only operates on conduct
through, and in proportion to, the subjective religious
feeling. The sanction, so far as it is disinterested, is
always in the mind itself; and the notion therefore
of the transcendental moralists must be, that this
sanction will not exist in the mind unless it is believed
to have its root out of the mind ; and that if a person
is able to say to himself, This which is restraining me,

ITS SANCTIONS. 43

and which is called my conscience, is only a feeling in
my own mind, he may possibly draw the conclusion
that when the feeling ceases the obligation ceases, and
that if he find the feeling inconvenient, he may dis-
regard it, and endeavour to get rid of it. But is this
danger confined to the utilitarian morality? Does
the belief that moral obligation has its seat outside
the mind make the feeling of it too strong to be got
rid of? The fact is so far otherwise, that all moralists
admit and lament the ease with which, in the gene-
rality of minds, conscience can be silenced or stifled.
The question, Need I obey my conscience ? is quite
as often put to themselves by persons who never heard
of the principle of utility, as by its adherents. Those
whose conscientious feelings are so weak as to allow
of their asking this question, if they answer it affirma-
tively, will not do so because they believe in the
transcendental theory, but because of the external
sanctions.

It is not necessary, for the present purpose, to decide
whether the feeling of duty is innate or implanted.
Assuming it to be innate, it is an open question to
what objects it naturally attaches itself; for the
philosophic supporters of that theory are now agreed
that the intuitive perception is of principles of morality,
and not of the details. If there be anything innate
in the matter, I see no reason why the feeling which
is innate should not be that of regard to the pleasures
and pains of others. If there is any principle of morals
which is intuitively obligatory, I should say it must
be that. If so, the intuitive ethics would coincide
with the utilitarian, and there would be no further
quarrel between them. Even as it is, the intuitive

44 UTILITARIANISM.

moralists, though they believe that there are other
intuitive moral obligations, do already believe this to
be one ; for they unanimously hold that a large portion
of morality turns upon the consideration due to the
interests of our fellow creatures. Therefore, if the
belief in the transcendental origin of moral obligation
gives any additional efficacy to the internal sanction,
it appears to me that the utilitarian principle has
already the benefit of it.

On the other hand, if, as is my own belief, the moral
feelings are not innate, but acquired, they are not for
that reason the less natural. It is natural to man to
speak, to reason, to build cities, to cultivate the
ground, though these are acquired faculties. The
moral feelings are not indeed a part of our nature, in
the sense of being in any perceptible degree present
in all of us ; but this, unhappily, is a fact admitted
by those who believe the most strenuously in their
transcendental origin. Like the other acquired capa-
cities above referred to, the moral faculty, if not a
part of our nature, is a natural outgrowth from it;
capable, like them, in a certain small degree, of spring-
ing up spontaneously; and susceptible of being brought
by cultivation to a high degree of development.
Unhappily it is also susceptible, by a sufficient use of
the external sanctions and of the force of early im-
pressions, of being cultivated in almost any direction :
so that there is hardly anything so absurd or so mis-
chievous that it may not, by means of these influences,
be made to act on the human mind with all the
authority of conscience. To doubt that the same
potency might be given by the same means to the
principle of utility, even if it had no foundation in

ITS SANCTIONS. 45

human nature, would be flying in the face of all
experience.

But moral associations which are wholly of artificial
creation, when intellectual culture goes on, yield by
degrees to the dissolving force of analysis : and if the
feeling of duty, when associated with utility, would
appear equally arbitrary; if there were no leading
department of our nature, no powerful class of senti-
ments, with which that association would harmonize,
which would make us feel it congenial, and incline us
not only to foster it in others (for which we have
abundant interested motives), but also to cherish it in
ourselves ; if there were not, in short, a natural basis
of sentiment for utilitarian morality, it might well
happen that this association also, even after it had
been implanted by education, might be analysed
away.

But there is this basis of powerful natural senti-
ment ; and this it is which, when once the general
happiness is recognised as the ethical standard, will
constitute the strength of the utilitarian morality.
This firm foundation is that of the social feelings of
mankind ; the desire to be in unity with our fellow
creatures, which is already a powerful principle in
human nature, and happily one of those which tend
to become stronger, even without express inculcation,
from the influences of advancing civilization. The
social state is at once so natural, so necessary, and so
habitual to man, that, except in some unusual circum-
stances or by an effort of voluntary abstraction, he
never conceives himself otherwise than as a member
of a body ; and this association is rivetted more and
more, as mankind are further removed from the state

46 UTILITARIANISM,

of savage independence. Any condition, therefore,
which is essential to a state of society, becomes more
and more an inseparable part of every person's con-
ception of the state of things which he is born into,
and which is the destiny of a human being. Now,
society between human beings, except in the relation
of master and slave, is manifestly impossible on any
other footing than that the interests of all are to be
consulted. Society between equals can only exist on
the understanding that the interests of all are to be
regarded equally. And since in all states of civiliza-
tion, every person, except an absolute monarch, has
equals, every one is obliged to live on these terms
with somebody; and in every age some advance is
made towards a state in which it will be impossible to
live permanently on other terms with anybody. In
this way people grow up unable to conceive as possible
to them a state of total disregard of other people's
interests. They are under a necessity of conceiving
themselves as at least abstaining from all the grosser
injuries, and (if only for their own protection) living
in a state of constant protest against them. They are
also familiar with the fact of co-operating with others,
and proposing to themselves a collective, not an indi-
vidual interest as the aim (at least for the time being)
of their actions. So long as they are co-operating,
their ends are identified with those of others ; there
is at least a temporary feeling that the interests of
others are their own interests. Not only does all
strengthening of social ties, and all healthy growth of
society, give to each individual a stronger personal
interest in practically consulting the welfare of others;
it also leads him to identify his feelings more and more

ITS SANCTIONS. 47

with their good, or at least with an ever greater
degree of practical consideration for it. He comes, as
though instinctively, to be conscious of himself as a
being who of course pays regard to others. The good
of others becomes to him a thing naturally and neces-
sarily to be attended to, like any of the physical con-
ditions of our existence. Now, whatever amount of
this feeling a person has, he is urged by the strongest
motives both of interest and of sympathy to demon-
strate it, and to the utmost of his power encourage it
in others ; and even if he has none of it himself, he is
as greatly interested as any one else that others should
have it. Consequently the smallest germs of the
feeling are laid hold of and nourished by the contagion
of sympathy and the influences of education; and a
complete web of corroborative association is woven
round it, by the powerful agency of the external
sanctions. This mode of conceiving ourselves and
human life, as civilization goes on, is felt to be more
and more natural. Every step in political improve-
ment renders it more so, by removing the sources of
opposition of interest, and levelling those inequalities
of legal privilege between individuals or classes, owing
to which there are large portions of mankind whose
happiness it is still practicable to disregard. In an
improving state of the human mind, the influences are
constantly on the increase, which tend to generate in
each individual a feeling of unity with all the rest ;
which, if perfect, would make him never think of, or
desire, any beneficial condition for himself, in the
benefits of which they are not included. If we now
suppose this feeling of unity to be taught as a religion,
and the whole force of education, of institutions, and

4S UTILITARIANISM.

of opinion, directed, as it once was in the case of
religion, to make every person grow up from infancy
surrounded on all sides both by the profession and
the practice of it, I think that no one, who can realize
this conception, will feel any misgiving about the
sufficiency of the ultimate sanction for the Happiness
morality. To any ethical student who finds the
realization difficult, I recommend, as a means of
facilitating it, the second of M. Comte's two principal
works, the Traite de Politique Positive. I entertain
the strongest objections to the system of politics and
morals set forth in that treatise ; but I think it has
superabundantly shown the possibility of giving to
the service of humanity, even without the aid of belief
in a Providence, both the psychological power and
the social efficacy of a religion ; making it take hold
of human life, and colour all thought, feeling, and
action, in a manner of which the greatest ascendancy
ever exercised by any religion may be but a type and
foretaste ; and of which the danger is, not that it
should be insufficient, but that it should be so exces-
sive as to interfere unduly with human freedom and
individuality.

Neither is it necessary to the feeling which consti-
tutes the binding force of the utilitarian morality on
those who recognise it, to wait for those social influ-
ences which would make its obligation felt by mankind
at large. In the comparatively early state of human
advancement in which we now live, a person cannot
indeed feel that entireness of sympathy with all
others, which would make any real discordance in the
general direction of their conduct in life impossible ;
but already a person in whom the social feeling is at

ITS SANCTIONS. 49

all developed, cannot bring himself to think of the rest
of his fellow creatures as struggling rivals with him
for the means of happiness, whom he must desire to
see defeated in their object in order that he may
succeed in his. The deeply rooted conception which
every individual even now has of himself as a social
being, tends to make him feel it one of his natural
wants that there should be harmony between his
feelings and aims and those of his fellow creatures.
If differences of opinion and of mental culture make
it impossible for him to share many of their actual
feelings — perhaps make him denounce and defy those
feelings — he still needs to be conscious that his real
aim and theirs do not conflict ; that he is not opposing
himself to what they really wish for, namely their own
good, but is, on the contrary, promoting it. This
feeling in most individuals is much inferior in strength
to their selfish feelings, and is often wanting alto-
gether. But to those who have it, it possesses all the
characters of a natural feeling. It does not present
itself to their minds as a superstition of education, or
a law despotically imposed by the power of society,
but as an attribute which it would not be well for
them to be without. This conviction is the ultimate
sanction of the greatest happiness morality. This it
is which makes any mind, of well developed feelings,
work with, and not against, the outward motives to
care for others, afforded by what I have called the ex-
ternal sanctions ; and when those sanctions are
wanting, or act in an opposite direction, constitutes
in itself a powerful internal binding force, in propor-
tion to the sensitiveness and thoughtfulness of the

E

50 UTILITARIANISM.

character ; since few but those whose mind is a moral
blank, could bear to lay out their course of life on the
plan of paying no regard to others except so far as
their own private interest compels.

51

CHAPTEE IY.

OF WHAT SORT OF PROOF THE PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY
IS SUSCEPTIBLE.

IT has already been remarked, that questions of
ultimate ends do not admit of proof, in the ordinary
acceptation of the term. To be incapable of proof by
reasoning is common to all first principles; to the
first premises of our knowledge, as well as to those of
our conduct. But the former, being matters of fact,
may be the subject of a direct appeal to the faculties
which judge of fact — namely, our senses, and our in-
ternal consciousness. Can an appeal be made to the
same faculties on questions of practical ends ? Or by
what other faculty is cognizance taken of them ?

Questions about ends are, in other words, questions
what things are desirable. The utilitarian doctrine
is, that happiness is desirable, and the only thing de-
sirable, as an end ; all other things being only desir-
able as means to that end. What ought to be required
of this doctrine — what conditions is it requisite that
the doctrine should fulfil — to make good its claim to
be believed?

The only proof capable of being given that an object
is visible, is that people actually see it. The only
proof that a sound is audible, is that people hear it :
and so of the other sources of our experience. In like
manner, I apprehend, the sole evidence it is possible

E2

52 UTILITARIANISM.

to produce that anything is desirable, is that people
do actually desire it. If the end which the utilitarian
doctrine proposes to itself were not, in theory and in
practice, acknowledged to be an end, nothing could
ever convince any person that it was so. No reason
can be given why the general happiness is desirable,
except that each person, so far as he believes it to be
attainable, desires his own happiness. This, however,
being a fact, we have not only all the proof which the
case admits of, but all which it is possible to require,
that happiness is a good : that each person's happiness
is a good to that person, and the general happiness,
therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons.
Happiness has made out its title as one of the ends of
conduct, and consequently one of the criteria of
morality.

But it has not, by this alone, proved itself to/ be the
sole criterion. To do that, it would seem, by the
same rule, necessary to show, not only that people
desire happiness, but that they never desire anything
else. Now it is palpable that they do desire things
which, in common language, are decidedly distin-
guished from happiness. They desire, for example,
virtue, and the absence of vice, no less really than
pleasure and the absence of pain. The desire of virtue
is not as universal, but it is as authentic a fact, as the
desire of happiness. And hence the opponents of the
utilitarian standard deem that they have a right to
infer that there are other ends of human action besides
happiness, and that happiness is not the standard of
approbation and disapprobation.

But does the utilitarian doctrine deny that people
desire virtue, or maintain that virtue is not a thing to

HOW PROVED. 53

be desired? The very reverse. It maintains not only
that virtue is to be desired, but that it is to be desired
disinterestedly, for itself. Whatever may be the
opinion of utilitarian moralists as to the original con-
ditions by which virtue is made virtue ; however they
may believe (as they do) that actions and dispositions
are only virtuous because they promote another end
than virtue; yet this being granted, and it having
been decided, from considerations of this description,
what is virtuous, they not only place virtue at the very
head of the things which are good as means to the
ultimate end, but they also recognise as a psychologi-
cal fact the possibility of its being, to the individual,
a good in itself, without looking to any end beyond
it ; and hold, that the mind is not in a right state, not
in a state conformable to Utility, not in the state most
conducive to the general happiness, unless it does love
virtue in this manner — as a thing desirable in itself,
even although, in the individual instance, it should
not produce those other desirable consequences which
it tends to produce, and on account of which it is held
to be virtue. This opinion is not, in the smallest
degree, a departure from the Happiness principle.
The ingredients of happiness are very various, and
each of them is desirable in itself, and not merely
when considered as swelling an aggregate. The prin-
ciple of utility does not mean that any given pleasure,
as music, for instance, or any given exemption from
pain, as for example health, are to be looked upon as
means to a collective something termed happiness, and
to be desired on that account. They are desired and
desirable in and for themselves ; besides being means,
they are a part of the end. Yirtue, according to the

54 UTILITARIANISM.

utilitarian doctrine, is not naturally and originally
part of the end, but it is capable of becoming so ; and
in those who love it disinterestedly it has become so,
and is desired and cherished, not as a means to happi-
ness, but as a part of their happiness.

To illustrate this farther, we may remember that
virtue is not the only thing, originally a means, and
which if it were not a means to anything else, would
be and remain indifferent, but which by association
with what it is a means to, comes to be desired for
itself, and that too with the utmost intensity. What,
for example, shall we say of the love of money ? There
is nothing originally more desirable about money than
about any heap of glittering pebbles. Its worth is
solely that of the things which it will buy; the
desires for other things than itself, which it is a means
of gratifying. Yet the love of money is not only one
of the strongest moving forces of human life, but
money is, in many cases, desired in and for itself; the
desire to possess it is often stronger than the desire to
use it, and goes on increasing when all the desires
which point to ends beyond it, to be compassed by
it, are falling off. It may, then, be said truly, that
money is desired not for the sake of an end, but as
part of the end. From being a means to happiness, it
has come to be itself a principal ingredient of the in-
dividual's conception of happiness. The same may be
said of the majority of the great objects of human life
— power, for example, or fame ; except that to each of
these there is a certain amount of immediate pleasure
annexed, which has at least the semblance of being
naturally inherent in them ; a thing which cannot be
said of money. Still, however, the strongest natural

HOW PROVED. 55

attraction, both of power and of fame, is the immense
aid they give to the attainment of our other wishes ;
and it is the strong association thus generated between
them and all our objects of desire, which gives to the
direct desire of them the intensity it often assumes, so
as in some characters to surpass in strength all other
desires, In these cases the means have become a part
of the end, and a more important part of it than any
of the things which they are means to. What was
once desired as an instrument for the attainment of
happiness, has come to be desired for its own sake.
In being desired for its own sake it is, however, desired
as part of happiness. The person is made, or thinks
he would be made, happy by its mere possession ; and
is made unhappy by failure to obtain it. The desire
of it is not a different thing from the desire of happi-
ness, any more than the love of music, or the desire of
health. They are included in happiness. They are
some of the elements of which the desire of happiness
is made up. Happiness is not an abstract idea, but a
concrete whole ; and these are some of its parts. And
the utilitarian standard sanctions and approves their
being so. Life would be a poor thing, very ill pro-
vided with sources of happiness, if there were not this
provision of nature, by which things originally indif-
ferent, but conducive to, or otherwise associated with,
the satisfaction of our primitive desires, become in
themselves sources of pleasure more valuable than the
primitive pleasures, both in permanency, in the space
of human existence that they are capable of covering,
and even in intensity.

Virtue, according to the utilitarian conception, is a
good of this description. There was no original desire

56 UTILITARIANISM.

of it, or motive to it, save its conduciveness to pleasure,
and especially to protection from pain. But through
the association thus formed, it may be felt a good in
itself, and desired as such with as great intensity as
any other good ; and with this difference between it
and the love of money, of power, or of fame, that all
of these may, and often do, render the individual
noxious to the other members of the society to which
he belongs, whereas there is nothing which makes him
so much a blessing to them as the cultivation of the
disinterested love of virtue. And consequently, the
utilitarian standard, while it tolerates and approves
those other acquired desires, up to the point beyond
which they would be more injurious to the general
happiness than promotive of it, enjoins and requires
the cultivation of the love of virtue up to the greatest
strength possible, as being above all things important
to the general happiness.

It results from the preceding considerations, that
there is in reality nothing desired except happiness.
Whatever is desired otherwise than as a means to
some end beyond itself, and ultimately to happiness,
is desired as itself a part of happiness, and is not
desired for itself until it has become so. Those who
desire virtue for its own sake, desire it either because
the consciousness of it is a pleasure, or because the
consciousness of being without it is a pain, or for both
reasons united; as in truth the pleasure and pain
seldom exist separately, but almost always together,
the same person feeling pleasure in the degree of
virtue attained, and pain in not having attained more.
If one of these gave him no pleasure, and the other no
pain, he would not love or desire virtue, or would

HOW PROVED. 57

desire it only for the other benefits which it might
produce to himself or to persons whom he cared for.

We have now, then, an answer to the question, of
what sort of proof the principle of utility is suscep-
tible. If the opinion which I have now stated is
psychologically true — if human nature is so consti-
tuted as to desire nothing which is not either a part
of happiness or a means of happiness, we can have no
other proof, and we require no other, that these are
the only things desirable. If so, happiness is the sole
end of human action, and the promotion of it the test
by which to judge of all human conduct ; from whence
it necessarily follows that it must be the criterion of
morality, since a part is included in the whole.

And now to decide whether this is really so;
whether mankind do desire nothing for itself but that
which is a pleasure to them, or of which the absence is
a pain ; we have evidently arrived at a question of
fact and experience, dependent, like all similar ques-
tions, upon evidence. It can only be determined
by practised self-consciousness and self-observation,
assisted by observation of others. I believe that these
sources of evidence, impartially consulted, will declare
that desiring a thing and finding it pleasant, aversion
to it and thinking of it as painfu], are phenomena
entirely inseparable, or rather two parts of the same
phenomenon ; in strictness of language, two different
modes of naming the same psychological fact : that
to think of an object as desirable (unless for the sake
of its consequences), and to think of it as pleasant, are
one and the same thing ; and that to desire anything,
except in proportion as the idea of it is pleasant, is a
physical and metaphysical impossibility.

58 UTILITARIANISM.

So obvious does this appear to me, that I expect it
will hardly be disputed: and the objection made will
be, not that desire can possibly be directed to any-
thing ultimately except pleasure and exemption from
pain, but that the will is a different thing from desire ;
that a person of confirmed virtue, or any other person
whose purposes are fixed, carries out his purposes
without any thought of the pleasure he has in con-
templating them, or expects to derive from their ful-
filment ; and persists in acting on them, even though
these pleasures are much diminished, by changes in
his character or decay of his passive sensibilities, or
are outweighed by the pains which the pursuit of the
purposes may bring upon him. All this I fully admit,
and have stated it elsewhere, as positively and emphati-
cally as any one. Will, the active phenomenon, is a dif-
ferent thing from desire, the state of passive sensibility,
and though originally an offshoot from it, may in time
take root and detach itself from the parent stock ; so
much so, that in the case of an habitual purpose,
instead of willing the thing because we desire it, we
often desire it only because we will it. This, how-
ever, is but an instance of that familiar fact, the power
of habit, and is nowise confined to the case of virtuous
actions. Many indifferent things, which men ori-
ginally did from a motive of some sort, they continue
to do from habit. Sometimes this is done uncon-
sciously, the consciousness coming only after the
action : at other times with conscious volition, but
volition which has become habitual, and is put in
operation by the force of habit, in opposition perhaps
to the deliberate preference, as often happens with
those who have contracted habits of vicious or hurtful

HOW PROVED. 59

indulgence. Third and last comes the case in which
the habitual act of will in the individual instance,
is not in contradiction to the general intention pre-
vailing at other times, but in fulfilment of it ; as in
the case of the person of confirmed virtue, and of all
who pursue deliberately and consistently any deter-
minate end. The distinction between will and desire
thus understood, is an authentic and highly important
psychological fact ; but the fact consists solely in this
— that will, like all other parts of our constitution, is
amenable to habit, and that we may will from habit
what we no longer desire for itself, or desire only
because we will it. It is not the less true that will,
in the beginning, is entirely produced by desire ; in-
cluding in that term the repelling influence of pain as
well as the attractive one of pleasure. Let us take
into consideration, no longer the person who has a
confirmed will to do right, but him in whom that
virtuous will is still feeble, conquerable by temptation,
and not to be fully relied on ; by what means can it
be strengthened ? How can the will to be virtuous,
where it does not exist in sufficient force, be implanted
or awakened ? Only by making the person desire
virtue — by making him think of it in a pleasurable
light, or of its absence in a painful one. It is by associ-
ating the doing right with pleasure, or the doing wrong
with pain, or by eliciting and impressing and bringing
home to the person's experience the pleasure naturally
involved in the one or the pain in the other, that it is pos-
sible to call forth that will to be virtuous, which, when
confirmed, acts without any thought of either pleasure
or pain. Will is the child of desire, and passes out of
the dominion of its parent only to come under that of

60 UTILITARIANISM.

habit. That which is the result of habit affords no
presumption of being intrinsically good; and there
would be no reason for wishing that the purpose of
virtue should become independent of pleasure and pain,
were it not that the influence of the pleasurable and
painful associations which prompt to virtue is not
sufficiently to be depended on for unerring constancy of
action until it has acquired the support of habit.
Both in feeling and in conduct, habit is the only thing
which imparts certainty; and it is because of the
importance to others of being able to rely absolutely
on one's feelings and conduct, and to oneself of being
able to rely on one's own, that the will to do right
ought to be cultivated into this habitual independence.
In other words, this state of the will is a means to
good, not intrinsically a good ; and does not contradict
the doctrine that nothing is a good to human beings
but in so far as it is either itself pleasurable, or a
means of attaining pleasure or averting pain.

But if this doctrine be true, the principle of utility
is proved. Whether it is so or not, must now be left
to the consideration of the thoughtful reader.

61

CHAPTEE V.

ON THE CONNEXION BETWEEN JUSTICE AND UTILITY.

IN all ages of speculation, one of the strongest
obstacles to the reception of the doctrine that
Utility or Happiness is the criterion of right and
wrong, has been drawn from the idea of Justice. The
powerful sentiment, and apparently clear perception,
which that word recals with a rapidity and certainty
resembling an instinct, have seemed to the majority
of thinkers to point to an inherent quality in things ;
to show that the Just must have an existence in Nature
as something absolute, generically distinct from every
variety of the Expedient, and, in idea, opposed to it,
though (as is commonly acknowledged) never, in the
long run, disjoined from it in fact.

In the case of this, as of our other moral senti-
ments, there is no necessary connexion between the
question of its origin, and that of its binding force.
That a feeling is bestowed on us by Nature, does not
necessarily legitimate all its promptings. The feeling
of justice might be a peculiar instinct, and might yet
require, like our other instincts, to be controlled and
enlightened by a higher reason. If we have intel-
lectual instincts, leading us to judge in a particular
way, as well as animal instincts that prompt us to act
in a particular way, there is no necessity that the
former should be more infallible in their sphere than

62 UTILITARIANISM.

the latter in theirs : it may as well happen that wrong
judgments are occasionally suggested by those, as
wrong actions by these. But though it is one thing
to believe that we have natural feelings of justice, and
another to acknowledge them as an ultimate criterion
of conduct, these two opinions are very closely con-
nected in point of fact. Mankind are always pre-
disposed to believe that any subjective feeling, not
otherwise accounted for, is a revelation of some ob-
jective reality. Our present object is to determine
whether the reality, to which the feeling of justice
corresponds, is one which needs any such special reve-
lation ; whether the justice or injustice of an action
is a thing intrinsically peculiar, and distinct from all
its other qualities, or only a combination of certain of
those qualities, presented under a peculiar aspect. For
the purpose of this inquiry it is practically important
to consider, whether the feeling itself, of justice and
injustice, is sui generis like our sensations of colour
and taste, or a derivative feeling, formed by a com-
bination of others. And this it is the more essential
to examine, as people are in general willing enough
to allow, that objectively the dictates of Justice coin-
cide with a part of the field of General Expediency ;
but inasmuch as the subjective mental feeling of
Justice is different from that which commonly attaches
to simple expediency, and, except in the extreme cases
of the latter, is far more imperative in its demands,
people find it difficult to see, in Justice, only a par-
ticular kind or branch of general utility, and think
that its superior binding force requires a totally dif-
ferent origin.

To throw light upon this question, it is necessary

HOW CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE. 63

to attempt to ascertain what is the distinguishing
character of justice, or of injustice : what is the
quality, or whether there is any quality, attributed in
common to all modes of conduct designated as unjust
(for justice, like many other moral attributes, is best
denned by its opposite), and distinguishing them from
such modes of conduct as are disapproved, but without
having that particular epithet of disapprobation applied
to them. If in everything which men are accustomed
to characterize as just or unjust, some one common
attribute or collection of attributes is always present,
we may judge whether this particular attribute or
combination of attributes would be capable of gather-
ing round it a sentiment of that peculiar character
and intensity by virtue of the general laws of our
emotional constitution, or whether the sentiment is
inexplicable, and requires to be regarded as a special
provision of Nature. If we find the former to be the
case, we shall, in resolving this question, have resolved
also the main problem : if the latter, we shall have to
seek for some other mode of investigating it.

To find the common attributes of a variety of
objects, it is necessary to begin by surveying the
objects themselves in the concrete. Let us therefore
advert successively to the various modes of action, and
arrangements of human affairs, which are classed, by
universal or widely spread opinion, as Just or as Un-
just. The things well known to excite the sentiments
associated with those names, are of a very multifarious
character. I shall pass them rapidly in review, with-
out studying any particular arrangement.

In the first place, it is mostly considered unjust to

64 UTILITARIANISM.

deprive any one of his personal liberty, his property,
or any other thing which belongs to him by law.
Here, therefore, is one instance of the application of
the terms just and unjust in a perfectly definite sense,
namely, that it is just to respect, unjust to violate,
the legal rights of any one. But this judgment admits
of several exceptions, arising from the other forms in
which the notions of justice and injustice present
themselves. For example, the person who suffers the
deprivation may (as the phrase is) have forfeited the
rights which he is so deprived of: a case to which we
shall return presently. But also,

Secondly ; the legal rights of which he is deprived,
may be rights which ought not to have belonged to
him ; in other words, the law which confers on him
these rights, may be a bad law. When it is so, or
when (which is the same thing for our purpose) it is
supposed to be so, opinions will differ as to the justice
or injustice of infringing it. Some maintain that no
law, however bad, ought to be disobeyed by an indi-
vidual citizen ; that his opposition to it, if shown at
all, should only be shown in endeavouring to get it
altered by competent authority. This opinion (which
condemns many of the most illustrious benefactors of
mankind, and would often protect pernicious institu-
tions against the only weapons which, in the state of
things existing at the time, have any chance of suc-
ceeding against them) is defended, by those who hold
it, on grounds of expediency ; principally on that of
the importance, to the common interest of mankind,
of maintaining inviolate the sentiment of submission
to law. Other persons, again, hold the directly con-
trary opinion, that any law, judged to be bad, may

HOW CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE. 65

blamelessly be disobeyed, even though it be not
judged to be unjust, but only inexpedient; while
others would confine the licence of disobedience to the
case of unjust laws : but again, some say, that all
laws which are inexpedient are unjust; since every
law imposes some restriction on the natural liberty of
mankind, which restriction is an injustice, unless legi-
timated by tending to their good. Among these
diversities of opinion, it seems to be universally ad-
mitted that there may be unjust laws, and that law,
consequently, is not the ultimate criterion of justice,
but may give to one person a benefit, or impose on
another an evil, which justice condemns. When, how-
ever, a law is thought to be unjust, it seems always
to be regarded as being so in the same way in which a
breach of law is unjust, namely, by infringing some-
body's right ; which, as it cannot in this case be a
legal right, receives a different appellation, and is
called a moral right. We may say, therefore, that a
second case of injustice consists in taking or with-
holding from any person that to which he has a moral
rigid.

Thirdly, it is universally considered just that each
person should obtain that (whether good or evil)
which he deserves ; and unjust that he should obtain
a good, or be made to undergo an evil, which he does
not deserve. This is, perhaps, the clearest and most
emphatic form in which the idea of justice is con-
ceived by the general mind. As it involves the
notion of desert, the question arises, what constitutes
desert ? Speaking in a general way, a person is un-
derstood to deserve good if he does right, evil if he
does wrong ; and in a more particular sense, to de-

66 UTILITARIANISM.

serve good from those to whom he does or has done
good, and evil from those to whom he does or has
done evil. The precept of returning good for evil
has never been regarded as a case of the fulfilment of
justice, but as one in which the claims of justice are
waved, in obedience to other considerations.

Fourthly, it is confessedly unjust to break faith
with any one : to violate an engagement, either ex-
press or implied, or disappoint expectations raised by
our own conduct, at least if we have raised those
expectations knowingly and voluntarily. Like the
other obligations of justice already spoken of, this one
is not regarded as absolute, but as capable of being
overruled by a stronger obligation of justice on the
other side; or by such conduct on the part of the
person concerned as is deemed to absolve us from our
obligation to him, and to constitute & forfeiture of the
benefit which he has been led to expect.

Fifthly, it is, by universal admission, inconsistent
with justice to be partial ; to show favour or pre-
ference to one person over another, in matters to
which favour and preference do not properly apply.
Impartiality, however, does not seem to be regarded
as a duty in itself, but rather as instrumental to some
other duty ; for it is admitted that favour and pre-
ference are not always censurable, and indeed the
cases in which they are condemned are rather the ex-
ception than the rule. A person would be more likely
to be blamed than applauded for giving his family or
friends no superiority in good offices over strangers,
when he could do so without violating any other
duty ; and no one thinks it unjust to seek one person
in preference to another as a friend, connexion, or

HOW CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE. 67

companion. Impartiality where rights are concerned,
is of course obligatory, but this is involved in the
more general obligation of giving to every one his
right. A tribunal, for example, must be impartial,
because it is bound to award, without regard to any
other consideration, a disputed object to the one of
two parties who has the right to it. There are other
cases in which impartiality means, being solely in-
fluenced by desert ; as with those who, in the capacity
of judges, preceptors, or parents, administer reward
and punishment as such. There are cases, again, in
which it means, being solely influenced by considera-
tion for the public interest ; as in making a selection
among candidates for a government employment.
Impartiality, in short, as an obligation of justice, may
be said to mean, being exclusively influenced by the
considerations which it is supposed ought to influence
the particular case in hand ; and resisting the solici-
tation of any motives which prompt to conduct diffe-
rent from what those considerations would dictate.

Nearly allied to the idea of impartiality, is that of
equality ; which often enters as a component part both
into the conception of justice and into the practice of
it, and, in the eyes of many persons, constitutes its
essence. But in this, still more than in any other
case, the notion of justice varies in different persons,
and always conforms in its variations to their notion
of utility. Each person maintains that equality is
the dictate of justice, except where he thinks that
expediency requires inequality. The justice of giving
equal protection to the rights of all, is maintained by
those who support the most outrageous inequality in
the rights themselves. Even in slave countries it is

IP 2

00 UTILITARIANISM.

theoretically admitted that the rights of the slave,
such as they are, ought to be as sacred as those of
the master ; and that a tribunal which fails to enforce
them with equal strictness is wanting in justice ;
while, at the same time, institutions which leave to
the slave scarcely any rights to enforce, are not
deemed unjust, because they are not deemed inexpe-
dient. Those who think that utility requires distinc-
tions of rank, do not consider it unjust that riches
and social privileges should be unequally dispensed ;
but those who think this inequality inexpedient,
think it unjust also. Whoever thinks that govern-
ment is necessary, sees no injustice in as much in-
equality as is constituted by giving to the magistrate
powers not granted to other people. Even among
those who hold levelling doctrines, there are as many
questions of justice as there are differences 01* opinion
about expediency. Some Communists consider it un-
just that the produce of the labour of the community
should be shared on any other principle than that of
exact equality ; others think it just that those should
receive most whose wants are greatest ; while others
hold that those who work harder, or who produce
more, or whose services are more valuable to the com-
munity, may justly claim a larger quota in the divi-
sion of the produce. And the sense of natural justice
may be plausibly appealed to in behalf of every one
of these opinions.

Among so many diverse applications of the term
Justice, which yet is not regarded as ambiguous, it is
a matter of some difficulty to seize the mental link
which holds them together, and on which the moral
sentiment adhering to the term essentially depends.

HOW CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE. 69

Perhaps, in this embarrassment, some help may be
derived from the history of the word, as indicated by
its etymology.

In most, if not in all, languages, the etymology of
the word which corresponds to Just, points distinctly
to an origin connected with the ordinances of law.
JustumiB a form of jmsum, that which has been ordered.
A//catoi/ comes directly from Si/cr?, a suit at law. RecJit,
from which came rigid and righteous, is synonymous
with law. The courts of justice, the administration
of justice, are the courts and the administration of
law. La justice, in French, is the established term for
judicature. I am not committing the fallacy imputed
with some show of truth to Home Tooke, of assuming
that a word must still continue to mean what it
originally meant. Etymology is slight evidence of
what the idea now signified is, but the very best
evidence of how it sprang up. There can, I think, be
no doubt that the idee mere, the primitive element, in
the formation of the notion of justice, was conformity
to law. It constituted the entire idea among the
Hebrews, up to the birth of Christianity ; as might be
expected in the case of a people whose laws attempted
to embrace all subjects on which precepts were re-
quired, and who believed those laws to be a direct
emanation from the Supreme Eeing. But other
nations, and in particular the Greeks and Eomans,
who knew that their laws had been made originally,
and still continued to be made, by men, were not
afraid to admit that those men might make bad laws;
might do, by law, the same things, and from the same
motives, which if done by individuals without the
sanction of law, would be called unjust. And hence

70 UTILITARIANISM.

the sentiment of injustice came to be attached, not to
all violations of law, but only to violations of such
laws as ought to exist, including such as ought to exist,
but do not ; and to laws themselves, if supposed to be
contrary to what ought to be law. In this manner the
idea of law and of its injunctions was still predominant
in the notion of justice, even when the laws actually in
force ceased to be accepted as the standard of it.

It is true that mankind consider the idea of justice
and its obligations as applicable to many things which
neither are, nor is it desired that they should be,
regulated by law. Nobody desires that laws should
interfere with the whole detail of private life ; yet
every one allows that in all daily conduct a person
may and does show himself to be either just or unjust.
But even here, the idea of the breach of what ought
to be law, still lingers in a modified shape. It would
always give us pleasure, and chime in with our feel-
ings of fitness, that acts which we deem unjust should
be punished, though we do not always think it expe-
dient that this should be done by the tribunals. We
forego that gratification on account of incidental in-
conveniences. We should be glad to see just conduct
enforced and injustice repressed, even in the minutest
details, if we were not, with reason, afraid of trusting
the magistrate with so unlimited an amount of power
over individuals. When we think that a person is
bound in justice to do a thing, it is an ordinary form
of language to say, that he ought to be compelled to
do it. We should be gratified to see the obligation
enforced by anybody who had the power. If we see
that its enforcement by law would be inexpedient, we
lament the impossibility, we consider the impunity

HOW CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE. 71

given to injustice as an evil, and strive to make amends
for it by bringing a strong expression of our own and
the public disapprobation to bear upon the offender.
Thus the idea of legal constraint is still the generating
idea of the notion of justice, though undergoing several
transformations before that notion, as it exists in an
advanced state of society, becomes complete.

The above is, I think, a true account, as far as it
goes, of the origin and progressive growth of the idea
of justice. But we must observe, that it contains, as
yet, nothing to distinguish that obligation from moral
obligation in general. For the truth is, that the idea
of penal sanction, which is the essence of law, enters
not only into the conception of injustice, but into that
of any kind of wrong. We do not call anything
wrong, unless we mean to imply that a person ought
to be punished in some way or other for doing it ; if
not by law, by the opinion of his fellow creatures ; if
not by opinion, by the reproaches of his own con-
science. This seems the real turning point of the dis-
tinction between morality and simple expediency. It
is a part of the notion of Duty in every one of its
forms, that a person may rightfully be compelled to
fulfil it. Duty is a thing which may be exacted from
a person, as one exacts a debt. Unless we think that
it may be exacted from him, we do not call it his
duty. Reasons of prudence, or the interest of other
people, may militate against actually exacting it ; but
the person himself, it is clearly understood, would not
be entitled to complain. There are other things, on
the contrary, which we wish that people should do,
which we like or admire them for doing, perhaps dis-
like or despise them for not doing, but yet admit that

72 UTILITARIANISM.

they are not bound to do ; it is not a case of moral
obligation ; we do not blame them, that is, we do not
think that they are proper objects of punishment.
How we come by these ideas of deserving and not
deserving punishment, will appear, perhaps, in the
sequel ; but I think there is no doubt that this dis-
tinction lies at the bottom of the notions of right
and wrong; that we call any conduct wrong, or
employ, instead, some other term of dislike or dispar-
agement, according as we think that the person ought,
or ought not, to be punished for it ; and we say, it
would be right to do so and so, or merely that it
would be desirable or laudable, according as we would
wish to see the person whom it concerns, compelled,
or only persuaded and exhorted, to act in that

manner.*

This, therefore, being the characteristic difference
which marks off, not justice, but morality in general,
from the remaining provinces of Expediency and
Worthiness ; the character is still to be sought which
distinguishes justice from other branches of morality.
Now it is known that ethical writers divide moral
duties into two classes, denoted by the ill-chosen ex-
pressions, duties of perfect and of imperfect obliga-
tion ; the latter being those in which, though the act
is obligatory, the particular occasions of performing it
are left to our choice ; as in the case of charity or
beneficence, which we are indeed bound to practise,
but not towards any definite person, nor at any pre-

* See this point enforced and illustrated by Professor Bain, in an ad-
mirable chapter (entitled ' The Ethical Emotions, or the Moral Sense'),
of the second of the two treatises composing his elaborate and profound
work on the Mind.

HOW CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE. 73

scribed time. In the more precise language of philo-
sophic jurists, duties of perfect obligation are those
duties in virtue of which a correlative right resides in
some person or persons ; duties of imperfect obligation
are those moral obligations which do not give birth to
any right. I think it will be found that this distinc-
tion exactly coincides with that which exists between
justice and the other obligations of morality. In our
survey of the various popular acceptations of justice,
the term appeared generally to involve the idea of a
personal right — a claim on the part of one or more
individuals, like that which the law gives when it
confers a proprietary or other legal right. Whether
the injustice consists in depriving a person of a pos-
session, or in breaking faith with him, or in treating
him worse than he deserves, or worse than other people
who have no greater claims, in each case the supposi-
tion implies two things — a wrong done, and some
assignable person who is wronged. Injustice may
also be done by treating a person better than others ;
but the wrong in this case is to his competitors, who
are also assignable persons. It seems to me that this
feature in the case — a right in some person, correlative
to the moral obligation — constitutes the specific ^dif-
ference between justice, and generosity or beneficence.
Justice implies something which it is not only right
to do, and wrong not to do, but which some individual
person can claim from us as his moral right. No one
has a moral right to our generosity or beneficence,
because we are not morally bound to practise those
virtues towards any given individual. And it will be
found with respect to this as to every correct defini-
tion, that the instances which seem to conflict with it are

74 UTILITARIANISM.

those which most confirm it. For if a moralist attempts,
as some have done, to make out that mankind gene-
rally, though not any given individual, have a right
to all the good we can do them, he at once, by that
thesis, includes generosity and beneficence within the
category of justice. He is obliged to say, that our
utmost exertions are due to our fellow creatures, thus
assimilating them to a debt ; or that nothing less can
be a sufficient return for what society does for us, thus
classing the case as one of gratitude ; both of which
are acknowledged cases of justice. Wherever there is
a right, the case is one of justice, and not of the virtue
of beneficence : and whoever does not place the distinc-
tion between justice and morality in general, where
we have now placed it, will be found to make no dis-
tinction between them at all, but to merge all moral-
ity in justice. /

Having thus endeavoured to determine the distinc-
tive elements which enter into the composition of the
idea of justice, we are ready to enter on the inquiry,
whether the feeling, which accompanies the idea, is
attached to it by a special dispensation of nature, or
whether it could have grown up, by any known laws,
out of the idea itself; and in particular, whether it
can have originated in considerations of general ex-
pediency.

I conceive that the sentiment itself does not arise
from anything which would commonly, or correctly,
be termed an idea of expediency ; but that though
the sentiment does not, whatever is moral in it does.

We have seen that the two essential ingredients in
the sentiment of justice are, the desire to punish a

HOW CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE. 75

person who has done harm, and the knowledge or
belief that there is some definite individual or indi-
viduals to whom harm has been done.

Now it appears to me, that the desire to punish a
person who has done harm to some individual, is a
spontaneous outgrowth from two sentiments, both in
the highest degree natural, and which either are or
resemble instincts; the impulse of self-defence, and
the feeling of sympathy.

It is natural to resent, and to repel or retaliate, any
harm done or attempted against ourselves, or against
those with whom we sympathize. The origin of this
sentiment it is not necessary here to discuss. Whether
it be an instinct or a result of intelligence, it is, we
know, common to all animal nature ; for every animal
tries to hurt those who have hurt, or who it thinks are
about to hurt, itself or its young. Human beings, on.
this point, only differ from other animals in two par-
ticulars. First, in being capable of sympathizing, not
solely with their offspring, or, like some of the more
noble animals, with some superior animal who is kind
to them, but with all human, and even with all
sentient, beings. Secondly, in having a more de-
veloped intelligence, which gives a wider range to
the whole of their sentiments, whether self-regarding
or sympathetic. By virtue of his superior intelligence,
even apart from his superior range of sympathy,
a human being is capable of apprehending a com-
munity of interest between himself and the human
society of which he forms a part, such that any con-
duct which threatens the security of the society
generally, is threatening to his own, and calls forth
his instinct (if instinct it be) of self-defence. The

76 UTILITARIANISM.

same superiority of intelligence, joined to the power
of sympathizing with human beings generally, enables
him to attach himself to the collective idea of his
tribe, his country, or mankind, in such a manner that
any act hurtful to them, raises his instinct of sym-
pathy, and urges him to resistance.

The sentiment of justice, in that one of its elements
which consists of the desire to punish, is thus, I con-
ceive, the natural feeling of retaliation or vengeance,
rendered by intellect and sympathy applicable to those
injuries, that is, to those hurts, which wound us
through, or in common with, society at large. This
sentiment, in itself, has nothing moral in it ; what is
moral is, the exclusive subordination of it to the
social sympathies, so as to wait on and obey their call.
For the natural feeling would make us resent indis-
criminately whatever any one does that is disagreeable
to us ; but when moralized by the social feeling, it
only acts in the directions conformable to the general
good : just persons resenting a hurt to society, though
not otherwise a hurt to themselves, and not resenting
a hurt to themselves, however painful, unless it be of
the kind which society has a common interest with
them in the repression of.

It is no objection against this doctrine to say, that
when we feel our sentiment of justice outraged, wre
are not thinking of society at large, or of any collec-
tive interest, but only of the individual case. It is
common enough certainly, though the reverse of com-
mendable, to feel resentment merely because we have
suffered pain ; but a person whose resentment is really
a moral feeling, that is, who considers whether an act
is blameable before he allows himself to resent it —

HOW CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE. 77

such a person, though, he may not say expressly to
himself that he is standing up for the interest of
society, certainly does feel that he is asserting a rule
which is for the benefit of others as well as for his
own. If he is not feeling this — if he is regarding the
act solely as it affects him individually — he is not
consciously just ; he is not concerning himself about
the justice of his actions. This is admitted even by
anti-utilitarian moralists. When Kant (as before
remarked) propounds as the fundamental principle of
morals, ' So act, that thy rule of conduct might be
adopted as a law by all rational beings/ he virtually
acknowledges that the interest of mankind collec-
tively, or at least of mankind indiscriminately, must
be in the mind of the agent when conscientiously
deciding on the morality of the act. Otherwise he
uses words without a meaning : for, that a rule even
of utter selfishness could not possibly be adopted by
all rational beings — that there is any insuperable
obstacle in the nature of things to its adoption — can-
not be even plausibly maintained. To give any
meaning to Kant's principle, the sense put upon it
must be, that we ought to shape our conduct by a
rule which all rational beings might adopt with benefit
to their collective interest.

To recapitulate : the idea of justice supposes two
things ; a rule of conduct, and a sentiment which
sanctions the rule. The first must be supposed com-
mon to all mankind, and intended for their good.
The other (the sentiment) is a desire that punishment
may be suffered by those who infringe the rule. There
is involved, in addition, the conception of some de-
finite person who suffers by the infringement ; whose

78 UTILITARIANISM.

rights (to use the expression appropriated to the case)
are violated by it. And the sentiment of justice
appears to me to be, the animal desire to repel or
retaliate a hurt or damage to oneself, or to those with
whom one sympathizes, widened so as to include all
persons, by the human capacity of enlarged sympathy,
and the human conception of intelligent self-interest.
Prom the latter elements, the feeling derives its
morality ; from the former, its peculiar impressive-
ness, and energy of self-assertion.

I have, throughout, treated the idea of a rigid re-
siding in the injured person, and violated by the
injury, not as a separate element in the composition
of the idea and sentiment, but as one of the forms in
which the other two elements clothe themselves.
These elements are, a hurt to some assignable person
or persons on the one hand, and a demand /for punish-
ment on the other. An examination of our own
minds, I think, will show, that these two things
include all that we mean when we speak of violation
of a right. When we call anything a person's right,
we mean that he has a valid claim on society to pro-
tect him in the possession of it, either by the force
of law, or by that of education and opinion. If
lie has what we consider a sufficient claim, on
whatever account, to have something guaranteed to
him by society, we say that he has a right to it. If
we desire to prove that anything does not belong to
him by right, we think this done as soon as it is ad-
mitted that society ought not to take measures for
securing it to him, but should leave him to chance, or
to his own exertions. Thus, a person is said to have
a right to what he can earn in fair professional com-

HOW CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE. 79

petition ; because society ought not to allow any other
person to hinder him from endeavouring to earn in
that manner as much as he can. But he has not a
right to three hundred a-year, though he may happen
to be earning it ; because society is not called on to
provide that he shall earn that sum. On the contrary,
if he owns ten thousand pounds three per cent, stock,
he has a right to three hundred a-year; because
society has come under an obligation to provide him
with an income of that amount.

To have a right, then, is, I conceive, to have some-
thing which society ought to defend me in the
possession of. If the objector goes on to ask, why it
ought ? I can give him no other reason than general
utility. If that expression does not seem to convey a
sufficient feeling of the strength of the obligatioo, nor
to account for the peculiar energy of the feeling,
it is because there goes to the composition of the
sentiment, not a rational only but also an animal
element, the thirst for retaliation; and this thirst
derives its intensity, as well as its moral justifica-
tion, from the extraordinarily important and im-
pressive kind of utility which is concerned. The in-
terest involved is that of security, to every one's
feelings the most vital of all interests. All other
earthly benefits are needed by one person, not needed
by another ; and many of them can, if necessary, be
cheerfully foregone, or replaced by something else;
but security no human being can possibly do without ;
on it we depend for all our immunity from evil, and
for the whole value of all and every good, beyond the
passing moment ; since nothing but the gratification
of the instant could be of any worth to us, if we could

80 UTILITARIANISM.

be deprived of everything the next instant by whoever
was momentarily stronger than ourselves. Now this
most indispensable of all necessaries, after physical
nutriment, cannot be had, unless the machinery for
providing it is kept unintermittedly in active play.
Our notion, therefore, of the claim we have on our
fellow creatures to join in making safe for us the very
groundwork of our existence, gathers feelings around
it so much more intense than those concerned in any
of the more common cases of utility, that the dif-
ference in degree (as is often the case in psychology)
becomes a real difference in kind. The claim assumes
that character of absoluteness, that apparent infinity,
and incommensurability with all other considerations,
which constitute the distinction between the feeling of
right and wrong and that of ordinary expediency and
inexpediency. The feelings concerned are /so power-
ful, and we count so positively on finding a responsive
feeling in others (all being alike interested), that ought
and should grow into must, and recognized in dispensa-
bility becomes a moral necessity, analogous to physi-
cal, and often not inferior to it in binding force.

If the preceding analysis, or something resembling
it, be not the correct account of the notion of justice;
if justice be totally independent of utility, and be a
standard per se, which the mind can recognize by
simple introspection of itself; it is hard to understand
why that internal oracle is so ambiguous, and why so
many things appear either just or unjust, according to
the light in which they are regarded.

We are continually informed that Utility is an un-
certain standard, which every different person inter-

HOW CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE. 81

prets differently, and that there is no safety but in
the immutable, ineffaceable, and unmistakeable dic-
tates of Justice, which carry their evidence in them-
selves, and are independent of the fluctuations of
opinion. One would suppose from this that on ques-
tions of justice there could be no controversy ; that if
we take that for our rule, its application to any given
case could leave us in as little doubt as a mathemati-
cal demonstration. So far is this from being the fact,
that there is as much difference of opinion, and as
much discussion, about what is just, as about what is
useful to society. Not only have different nations
and individuals different notions of justice, but in the
mind of one and the same individual, justice is not
some one rule, principle, or maxim, but many, which
do not always coincide in their dictates, and in choos-
ing between which, he is guided either by some
extraneous standard, or by his own personal pre-
dilections.

For instance, there are some who say, that it is
unjust to punish any one for the sake of example to
others ; that punishment is just, only when intended
for the good of the sufferer himself. Others maintain
the extreme reverse, contending that to punish persons
who have attained years of discretion, for their own
benefit, is despotism and injustice, since if the matter
at issue is solely their own good, no one has a right
to control their own judgment of it ; but that they
may justly be punished to prevent evil to others, this
being the exercise of the legitimate right of self-
defence. Mr. Owen, again, affirms that it is unjust
to punish at all ; for the criminal did not make his
own character ; his education, and the circumstances

82 UTILITARIANISM.

which surrounded him, have made him a criminal,
and for these he is not responsible. All these opinions
are extremely plausible ; and so long as the question
is argued as one of justice simply, without going down
to the principles which lie under justice and are the
source of its authority, I am unable to see how any of
these reasoners can be refuted. For in truth every
one of the three builds upon rules of justice con-
fessedly true. The first appeals to the acknowledged
injustice of singling out an individual, and making
him a sacrifice, without his consent, for other people's
benefit. The second relies on the acknowledged
justice of self-defence, and the admitted injustice of
forcing one person to conform to another's notions of
what constitutes his good. The Owenite invokes the
admitted principle, that it is unjust to punish any one
for what he cannot help. Each is triumphant so long
as he is not compelled to take into consideration any
other maxims of justice than the one he has selected ;
but as soon as their several maxims are brought face
to face, each disputant seems to have exactly as much
to say for himself as the others. No one of them can
carry out his own notion of justice without trampling
upon another equally binding. These are difficulties ;
they have always been felt to be such ; and many de-
vices have been invented to turn rather than to over-
come them. As a refuge from the last of the three,
men imagined what they called the freedom of the
will ; fancying that they could not justify punishing
a man whose will is in a thoroughly hateful state,
unless it be supposed to have come into that state
through no influence of anterior circumstances. To
escape from the other difficulties, a favourite contri-

HOW CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE. 83

vance has been the fiction of a contract, whereby at
some unknown period all the members of society
engaged to obey the laws, and consented to be
punished for any disobedience to them; thereby
giving to their legislators the right, which it is
assumed they would not otherwise have had, of
punishing them, either for their own good or for that
of society. This happy thought was considered to
get rid of the whole difficulty, and to legitimate the
infliction of punishment, in virtue of another received
maxim of justice, Volenti non Jit injuria ; that is not
unjust which is done with the consent of the person
who is supposed to be hurt by it. I need hardly
remark, that even if the consent were not a mere
fiction, this maxim is not superior in authority to the
others which it is brought in to supersede. It is, on
the contrary, an instructive specimen of the loose and
irregular manner in which supposed principles of
justice grow up. This particular one evidently came
into use as a help to the coarse exigencies of courts of
law, which are sometimes obliged to be content with
very uncertain presumptions, on account of the greater
evils which would often arise from any attempt on
their part to cut finer. But even courts of law are
not able to adhere consistently to the maxim, for they
allow voluntary engagements to be set aside on the
ground of fraud, and sometimes on that of mere mis-
take or misinformation.

Again, when the legitimacy of inflicting punish-
ment is admitted, how many conflicting conceptions
of justice come to light in discussing the proper ap-
portionment of punishments to offences. No rule on
the subject recommends itself so strongly to the

G2

84 UTILITARIANISM.

primitive and spontaneous sentiment of justice, as the
lex talionis, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
Though this principle of the Jewish and of the
Mahomedan law has heen generally abandoned in
Europe as a practical maxim, there is, I suspect, in
most minds, a secret hankering after it ; and when re-
tribution accidentally falls on an offender in that
precise shape, the general feeling of satisfaction
evinced, bears witness how natural is the sentiment to
which this repayment in kind is acceptable. With
many, the test of justice in penal infliction is that the
punishment should be proportioned to the offence ;
meaning that it should be exactly measured by the
moral guilt of the culprit (whatever be their standard
for measuring moral guilt) : the consideration, what
amount of punishment is necessary to deter from the
offence, having nothing to do with the question of
justice, in their estimation : while there are others to
whom that consideration is all in all ; who maintain
that it is not just, at least for man, to inflict on a
fellow-creature, whatever may be his offences, any
amount of suffering beyond the least that will suffice
to prevent him from repeating, and others from imi-
tating, his misconduct.

To take another example from a subject already
once referred to. In a co-operative industrial asso-
ciation, is it just or not that talent or skill should give
a title to superior remuneration ? On the negative
side of the question it is argued, that whoever does
the best he can, deserves equally well, and ought not
in justice to be put in a position of inferiority for no
fault of his own ; that superior abilities have already
advantages more than enough, in the admiration they

HOW CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE. 85

excite, the personal influence they command, and the
internal sources of satisfaction attending them, with-
out adding to these a superior share of the world's
goods ; and that society is bound in justice rather to
make compensation to the less favoured, for this un-
merited inequality of advantages, than to aggravate
it. On the contrary side it is contended, that
society receives more from the more efficient labourer ;
that his services being more useful, society owes him
a larger return for them ; that a greater share of the
joint result is actually his work, and not to allow his
claim to it is a kind of robbery ; that if he is only to
receive as much as others, he can only be justly re-
quired to produce as much, and to give a smaller
amount of time and exertion, proportioned to his
superior efficiency. Who shall decide between these
appeals to conflicting principles of justice? Justice
has in this case two sides to it, which it is impossible
to bring into harmony, and the two disputants have
chosen opposite sides; the one looks to what it is just
that the individual should receive, the other to what
it is just that the community should give. Each,
from his own point of view, is unanswerable ; and
any choice between them, on grounds of justice, must
be perfectly arbitrary. Social utility alone can decide
the preference.

How many, again, and how irreconcileable, are the
standards of justice to which reference is made in dis-
cussing the repartition of taxation. One opinion is,
that payment to the State should be in numerical
proportion to pecuniary means. Others think that
justice dictates what they term graduated taxation ;
taking a higher per-centage from those who have more

00 UTILITARIANISM.

to spare. In point of natural justice a strong case
might be made for disregarding means altogether, and
taking the same absolute sum (whenever it could be
got) from every one : as the subscribers to a mess, or to
a club, all pay the same sum for the same privileges,
whether they can all equally afford it or not. Since
the protection (it might be said) of law and govern-
ment is afforded to, and is equally required by all,
there is no injustice in making all buy it at the same
price. It is reckoned justice, not injustice, that a
dealer should charge to all customers the same price
for the same article, not a price varying according to
their means of payment. This doctrine, as applied
to taxation, finds no advocates, because it conflicts so
strongly with man's feelings of humanity and of social
expediency ; but the principle of justice which it in-
vokes is as true and as binding as those whicli can be
appealed to against it. Accordingly it exerts a tacit
influence on the line of defence employed for other
modes of assessing taxation. People feel obliged to
argue that the State does more for the rich than for
the poor, as a justification for its taking more from
them : though this is in reality not true, for the rich
would be far better able to protect themselves, in the
absence of law or government, than the poor, and
indeed would probably be successful in converting the
poor into their slaves. Others, again, so far defer to
the same conception of justice, as to maintain that all
should pay an equal capitation tax for the protection
of their persons (these being of equal value to all),
and an unequal tax for the protection of their pro-
perty, which is unequal. To this others reply, that
the all of one man is as valuable to him as the all of

HOW CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE. 87

another. From these confusions there is no other
mode of extrication than the utilitarian.

Is, then, the difference between the Just and the
Expedient a merely imaginary distinction? Have
mankind been under a delusion in thinking that
justice is a more sacred thing than policy, and that
the latter ought only to be listened to after the former
has been satisfied? By no means. The exposition
we have given of the nature and origin of the senti-
ment, recognizes a real distinction ; and no one of
those wTho profess the most sublime contempt for the
consequences of actions as an element in their morality,
attaches more importance to the distinction than I do.
"While I dispute the pretensions of any theory which
sets up an imaginary standard of justice not grounded
on utility, I account the justice which is grounded on
utility to be the chief part, and incomparably the
most sacred and binding part, of all morality. Jus-
tice is a name for certain classes of moral rules, which
concern the essentials of human well-being more
nearly, and are therefore of more absolute obligation,
than any other rules for the guidance of life ; and the
notion which we have found to be of the essence of
the idea of justice, that of a right residing in an indi-
vidual, implies and testifies to this more binding
obligation.

The moral rules which forbid mankind to hurt one
another (in which we must never forget to include
wrongful interference with each other's freedom) are
more vital to human well-being than any maxims,
however important, which only point out the best
mode of managing some department of human affairs.

00 UTILITARIANISM.

They have also the peculiarity, that they are the
main element in determining the whole of the social
feelings of mankind. It is their observance which
alone preserves peace among human beings : if obe-
dience to them were not the rule, and disobedience
the exception, every one would see in every one else
an enemy, against whom he must be perpetually
guarding himself. What is hardly less important,
these are the precepts which mankind have the
strongest and the most direct inducements for im-
pressing upon one another. By merely giving to
each other prudential instruction or exhortation, they
may gain, or think they gain, nothing : in inculcating
on each other the duty of positive beneficence they
have an unmistakeable interest, but far less in degree :
a person may possibly not need the benefits of others ;
but he always needs that they should not ^do him
hurt. Thus the moralities which protect every indi-
vidual from being harmed by others, either directly
or by being hindered in his freedom of pursuing his
own good, are at once those which he himself has
most at heart, and those which he has the strongest
interest in publishing and enforcing by word and
deed. It is by a person's observance of these, that his
fitness to exist as one of the fellowship of human
beings, is tested and decided ; for on that depends his
being a nuisance or not to those with whom he is in
contact. Now it is these moralities primarily, which
compose the obligations of justice. The most marked
cases of injustice, and those which give the tone to
the feeling of repugnance which characterizes the
sentiment, are acts of wrongful aggression, or
wrongful exercise of power over some one ; the

HOW CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE. 89

next are those which consist in wrongfully with-
holding from him something which is his due : in both
cases, inflicting on him a positive hurt, either in the
form of direct suffering, or of the privation of some
good which he had reasonable ground, either of a
physical or of a social kind, for counting upon.

The same powerful motives which command the
observance of these primary moralities, enjoin the
punishment of those who violate them ; and as the
impulses of self-defence, of defence of others, and of
vengeance, are all called forth against such persons,
retribution, or evil for evil, becomes closely connected
with the sentiment of justice, and is universally in-
cluded in the idea. Good for good is also one of the
dictates of justice ; and this, though its social utility
is evident, and though it carries with it a natural
human feeling, has not at first sight that obvious
connexion with hurt or injury, which, existing in the
most elementary cases of just and unjust, is the source
of the characteristic intensity of the sentiment. But
the connexion, though less obvious, is not less reaL
He who accepts benefits, and denies a return of them
when needed, inflicts a real hurt, by disappointing
one of the most natural and reasonable of expectations,
and one which he must at least tacitly have encou-
raged, otherwise the benefits would seldom have been
conferred. The important rank, among human evils
and wrongs, of the disappointment of expectation, is
shown in the fact that it constitutes the principal
criminality of two such highly immoral acts as a
breach of friendship and a breach of promise. Yew
hurts which human beings can sustain are greater,
and none wound more, than when that on which they

90 UTILITARIANISM.

habitually and with full assurance relied, fails them in
the hour of need ; and few wrongs are greater than
this mere withholding of good; none excite more
resentment, either in the person suffering, or in a
sympathizing spectator. The principle, therefore, of
giving to each what they deserve, that is, good for
good as well as evil for evil, is not only included
within the idea of Justice as we have defined it, but
is a proper object of that intensity of sentiment,
which places the Just, in human estimation, above
the simply Expedient.

Most of the maxims of justice current in the world,
and commonly appealed to in its transactions, are
simply instrumental to carrying into effect the prin-
ciples of justice which we have now spoken of. That
a person is only responsible for what he has done
voluntarily, or could voluntarily have avoide/d; that
it is unjust to condemn any person unheard ; that the
punishment ought to be proportioned to the offence,
and the like, are maxims intended to prevent the just
principle of evil for evil from being perverted to the
infliction of evil without that justification. The
greater part of these common maxims have come into
use from the practice of courts of justice, which have
been naturally led to a more complete recognition and
elaboration than was likely to suggest itself to others,
of the rules necessary to enable them to fulfil their
double function, of inflicting punishment when due,
and of awarding to each person his right. .

That first of judicial virtues, impartiality, is an
obligation of justice, partly for the reason last men-
tioned ; as being a necessary condition of the fulfil-
ment of the other obligations of justice. But this is

HOW CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE. 91

not the only source of the exalted rank, among human
obligations, of those maxims of equality and impar-
tiality, which, both in popular estimation and in that
of the most enlightened, are included among the pre-
cepts of justice. In one point of view, they may be
considered as corollaries from the principles already
laid down. If it is a duty to do to each according to
his deserts, returning good for good as well as repress-
ing evil by evil, it necessarily follows that we should
treat all equally well (when no higher duty forbids)
who have deserved equally well of us, and that society
should treat all equally well who have deserved
equally well of it, that is, who have deserved equally
well absolutely. This is the highest abstract stan-
dard of social and distributive justice ; towards which
all institutions, and the efforts of all virtuous citizens,
should be made in the utmost possible degree to con-
verge. But this great moral duty rests upon a still
deeper foundation, being a direct emanation from the
first principle of morals, and not a mere logical corol-
lary from secondary or derivative doctrines. It is
involved in the very meaning of Utility, or the
Greatest-Happiness Principle. That principle is a
mere form of words without rational signification,
unless one person's happiness, supposed equal in degree
(with the proper allowance made for kind), is counted
for exactly as much as another's. Those conditions
being supplied, Bentham's dictum, ' everybody to
count for one, nobody for more than one/ might be
written under the principle of utility as an explana-
tory commentary.* The equal claim of everybody to

* This implication, in the first principle of the utilitarian scheme, of
perfect impartiality between persons, is regarded by Mr. Herbert

92 UTILITARIANISM.

happiness in the estimation of the moralist and the
legislator, involves an equal claim to all the means of
happiness, except in so far as the inevitable conditions
of human life, and the general interest, in which that
of every individual is included, set limits to the
maxim; and those limits ought to be strictly con-
strued. As every other maxim of justice, so this, is

Spencer (in his ' Social Statics') as a disproof of the pretensions of
utility to be a sufficient guide to right ; since (he says) the principle of
utility presupposes the anterior principle, that everybody has an equal
right to happiness. It may be more correctly described as supposing
that equal amounts of happiness are equally desirable, whether felt
by the same or by different persons. This, however, is not a pre-
supposition ; not a premise needful to support the principle of utility,
but the very principle itself; for what is the principle of utility,
if it be not that ' happiness' and ' desirable' are synonymous terms ? If
there is any anterior principle implied, it can be no other than this,
that the truths of arithmetic are applicable to the valuation of hap-
piness, as of all other measurable quantities. j

[Mr. Herbert Spencer, in a private communication on the subject of
the preceding Note, objects to being considered an opponent of Utili-
tarianism, and states that he regards happiness as the ultimate end of
morality ; but deems that end only partially attainable by empirical
generalizations from the observed results of conduct, and completely
attainable only by deducing, from the laws of life and the conditions of
existence, what kinds of action necessarily tend to produce happiness,
and what kinds to produce unhappiness. With the exception of the
word ' necessarily,' I have no dissent to express from this doctrine ; and
(omitting that word) I am not aware that any modern advocate of
utilitarianism is of a different opinion. Bentham, certainly, to whom
in the Social Statics Mr. Spencer particularly referred, is, least of all
writers, chargeable with unwillingness to deduce the effect of actions on
happiness from the laws of human nature and the universal conditions
of human life. The common charge against him is of relying too
exclusively upon such deductions, and declining altogether to be bound
by the generalizations from specific experience which Mr. Spencer
thinks that utilitarians generally confine themselves to. My own
opinion (and, as I collect, Mr. Spencer's) is, that in ethics, as in all
other branches of scientific study, the consilience of the results ot both
these processes, each corroborating and verifying the other, is requisite
to give to any general proposition the kind and degree of evidence
which constitutes scientific proof.]

HOW CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE. 93

by no means applied or held applicable universally ;
on the contrary, as I have already remarked, it bends
to every person's ideas of social expediency. But in
whatever case it is deemed applicable at all, it is held
to be the dictate of justice. All persons are deemed
to have a right to equality of treatment, except when
some recognised social expediency requires the reverse.
And hence all social inequalities which have ceased to
be considered expedient, assume the character not of
simple inexpediency, but of injustice, and appear so
tyrannical, that people are apt to wonder how they
ever could have been tolerated; forgetful that they
themselves perhaps tolerate other inequalities under
an equally mistaken notion of expediency, the correc-
tion of which would make that which they approve,
seem quite as monstrous as what they have at last
learnt to condemn. The entire history of social im-
provement has been a series of transitions, by which
one custom or institution after another, from being a
supposed primary necessity of social existence, has
passed into the rank of an universally stigmatized in-
justice and tyranny. So it has been with the distinc-
tions of slaves and freemen, nobles and serfs, patricians
and plebeians ; and so it will be, and in part already
is, with the aristocracies of colour, race, and sex.

It appears from what has been said, that justice is
a name for certain moral requirements, which, regarded
collectively, stand higher in the scale of social utility,
and are therefore of more paramount obligation, than
any others ; though particular cases may occur in
which some other social duty is so important, as to
overrule any one of the general maxims of justice.
Thus, to save a life, it may not only be allowable, but

94 UTILITARIANISM.

a duty, to steal, or take by force, the necessary food
or medicine, or to kidnap, and compel to officiate, the
only qualified medical practitioner. In such cases, as
we do not call anything justice which is not a virtue,
we usually say, not that justice must give way to
some other moral principle, but that what is just in
ordinary cases is, by reason of that other principle,
not just in the particular case. By this useful accom-
modation of language, the character of indefeasibility
attributed to justice is kept up, and we are saved from
the necessity of maintaining that there can be laud-
able injustice.

The considerations which have now been adduced
resolve, I conceive, the only real difficulty in the
utilitarian theory of morals. It has always been evi-
dent that all cases of justice are also cases of expedi-
ency : the difference is in the peculiar sentiment which
attaches to the former, as contradistinguished from
the latter. If this characteristic sentiment has been
sufficiently accounted for ; if there is no necessity to
assume for it any peculiarity of origin ; if it is simply
the natural feeling of resentment, moralized by being
made coextensive with the demands of social good;
and if this feeling not only does but ought to exist in
all the classes of cases to which the idea of justice
corresponds ; that idea no longer presents itself as a
stumbling-block to the utilitarian ethics. Justice
remains the appropriate name for certain social utilities
which are vastly more important, and therefore more
absolute and imperative, than any others are as a class
(though not more so than others may be in particular
cases) ; and which, therefore, ought to be, as well as
naturally are, guarded by a sentiment not only diffe-

HOW CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE. 95

rent in degree, but also in kind; distinguished from
the milder feeling which attaches to the mere idea of
promoting human pleasure or convenience, at once by
the more definite nature of its commands, and by the
sterner character of its sanctions.

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